And architecture that rose high in the air and dug deep in the ground and floated far out on the water on piers and pontoons… architecture that could be poured one day and lived in the next…
And robots.
Above all, robots… robots to burrow and haul and smelt and fabricate, to build and farm and weave and sew.
What the land lacked in wealth, the sea was made to yield and the laboratory invented the rest… and the factories became a pipeline of plenty, churning out enough to feed and clothe and house a dozen worlds.
Limitless discovery, infinite power in the atom, tireless labor of humanity and robots, mechanization that drove jungle and swamp and ice off the Earth, and put up office buildings and manufacturing centers and rocket ports in their place…
The pipeline of production spewed out riches that no king in the time of Malthus could have known.
But a pipeline has two ends. The invention and power and labor pouring in at one end must somehow be drained out at the other…
Lucky Morey, blessed economic-consuming unit, drowning in the pipeline’s flood, striving manfully to eat and drink and wear and wear out his share of the ceaseless tide of wealth.
Morey felt far from blessed, for the blessings of the poor are always best appreciated from afar.
Quotas worried his sleep until he awoke at eight o’clock the next morning, red-eyed and haggard, but inwardly resolved. He had reached a decision. He was starting a new life.