Edge, Red: Welcome to museum earth...unless?

By Ed Adams

You pressed the Red button.

You think you've stopped the End of Earth.

But there's a legacy

Some have plans for Earth

That could do more than stop its pulse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Firstelement
• Release date: Feb 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781913818111

Ed Adams

NaNoWriMo novel writing winner several times, Ed Adams was born, raised and educated in London but has travelled widely causing some of his friends to suspect him of a double life.

Book preview

Thanks

A big thank you for the tolerance and bemused support from all of those around me. To those who know when it is time to say, step away from the keyboard! and to those who don't.

To Julie for that kind of understanding that only comes with really knowing me.

To thesixtwenty.co.uk for direction. 

To the NaNoWriMo gang for the continued inspiration and encouragement.

To Topsham, for being lovely.

To John, for many hours of intense scrutiny and the insistence on an ending.

To Elizabeth James, for asking the right questions.

To Donna J. Manifestly Haraway for the cyborg manifesto.

To the edge-walkers. They know who they are.

And, of course, thanks to the extensive support via the random scribbles of rashbre via http://rashbre2.blogspot.com and its cast of amazing and varied readers whether human, twittery, smoky, cool kats, photographic, dramatic, musical, anagrammed, globalized or simply maxed-out.

Not forgetting the cast of characters involved in producing this; they all have virtual lives of their own.

And of course, to you, dear reader, for at least 'giving it a go'.

Books by Ed Adams include:

About Ed Adams Novels:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Thanks

Books by Ed Adams include:

About Ed Adams Novels:

PART ONE

Author's Note

Prologue

The Goose Girl

Starting

Reframe

Telos

Last transmission

Tithed

Choice

Red Button

Being Mortal

Life on Ganymede

The mess we’re in

Earth Council

Reputational damage

Deacon

Bomb walker

Fried

Into the mystic

Can't stop now

Transmission protocol

Some of your things ain’t normal

Earthside

Stacked

End of the world as we know it

Central

Act of War?

Kratos Trigger

Great telemetry

Bluster and hand-waving

Western Plaza Food Mall

PART TWO

Cover story

Counterbalance

X-Blade

Præternatural

The lost archive of Dr Bai Tan Chungli

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace

Frog

Blow things up

Directive

Hum-Exes, RTB

Pulse

Not a drill

Middle man removal

The  Pulse Papers

Playing with Fire

Instruct Deacon

Tiny structures

Didactic Chamber

Movin' out

Liberty Base

The Key

SkyTrain

Two-million-mile deflection

My house is your house

Blood donations

25:17

PART THREE

Sum of the parts

Serum

Binary components

Business

Sunrise Accord

MedFac

That old trick

MKUltra

Both moves

DAARQ

Trust in Drugs

Inky blue pattern

Die Gänsemagd

Chakras

Suited and booted

No-one would fly a j-rover like that

A month later - Ganymede

Six months later - EarthSide

PART ONE

Author's Note

The series of novels Edge; Edge, Blue and Edge, Red discuss Earth after a major series of dystopian catastrophes. Fortunately, Earth has found an additional source of energy and transport by bringing magnetite back from Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter.

At the end of Edge, I left an intractable problem to be solved by the characters. A reader suggested that I should try to solve the situation anyway, which has led to the two further novels, Edge, Blue and Edge, Red which deal with the end situation of Edge in two different ways. Some building blocks of the solution are similar, but the result creates two very different stories. Both Edge, Blue and Edge, Red start at the same moment but diverge in their outlook. Events from 300 years previously and described in the novel Pulse also surface in Edge, Red.

I hope you enjoy!

Ed Adams

Prologue

Earth was threatened with extinction. A series of events comprising The Scourge, The Warming, The Klima Wars, The Restructuring had occurred, and a fortunate series of discoveries had been made.

These discoveries were referred to as The Great Leap and included, crucially, the discovery and adoption of magnetite as a new form of fuel to power Earthside. The challenge was that magnetite had to be gathered from a distant moon of Jupiter named Ganymede and a round trip flight with on-Ganymede work could take as long as 11 years.

Earth had been divided into three zones following the destruction of large tracts of the planet through the varied climactic and warring conditions which have gripped it. Now, Amerika, Eurussia and Sino-Nihon were the three Superstates controlling Earthside with some less well-developed areas known as The Scratch, which were largely unregulated.

The economics of survival were linked to the regular shipments of magnetite from Ganymede to Earthside. A series of events (described in Edge) had forced a difficult situation for the Earthside dwellers, who now must decide how to best continue to provide for Earth against overwhelmingly severe conditions. Two Earthside Primes, Sam and Cindy, had been working on a plan to save Earth, and were now presented with the impossible decision of which paths to take Edge, Blue or Edge, Red.

The choice of a simple button press.

The Goose Girl

The Brothers Grimm

A widowed queen sends her daughter to a faraway land, to marry. Accompanying the princess are her magical horse Falada, who can speak, and a maid-in-waiting. The queen gives the princess a special cloth with two drops of her blood and says as a talisman it will protect her as long as she wears it.

The princess and her servant travel for a time, and eventually the princess grows thirsty. She asks the maid to go and fetch her some water, but the maid simply says: If you want water, get it for yourself. I don't want to be your servant any longer.

So, the princess must fetch herself water from the nearby stream. She wails softly: What will become of me?

The talisman answers: Alas, alas, if your mother knew, her loving heart would break in two. After a while, the princess gets thirsty again. So she asks her maid once more to get her some water.

But again, the servant says, I will not serve you any longer, no matter what you or your mother say.

The servant leaves the poor princess to drink from the river by her dainty little hands. When she bends to the water her talisman cloth falls and floats away.

The maid takes advantage of the princess's new vulnerability. She orders the princess to change clothes with her and the horses as well. She threatens to kill the princess if she doesn't swear never to say a word about this reversal of roles to any living being. Sadly, the princess takes the oath.

The maid servant then rides off on Falada, while the princess must mount the maid's nag. At the palace, the maid poses as princess and the princess servant is ordered to guard the geese with a little boy called Conrad.

The false bride orders Falada to be killed, as she fears he might talk. The real princess hears of this and begs the slaughterer to nail Falada's head above the doorway where she passes with her geese every morning.

The next morning the goose girl addresses Falada's head over the doorway:

Falada, Falada, thou art dead, and all the joy in my life has fled, and Falada answers

Alas, Alas, if your mother knew, her loving heart would break in two.

On the goose meadow, Conrad watches the princess comb her beautiful hair and he becomes greedy to pluck one or two of her golden locks. But the goose girl sees this and says a charm:

Blow wind, blow, I say, take Conrad's hat away. Do not let him come back until my hair is combed today.

And so the wind takes his hat away, and he cannot return before the goose girl has finished brushing and plaiting her hair.

Conrad angrily goes to the king and declares he will not herd geese with this girl any longer because of the strange things that happen.

The king tells him to do it one more time, and the next morning he hides and watches. He finds everything as Conrad has told. That evening, he asks the princess to tell him her story. But she refuses to say anything because of her oath.

The king suggests that she might tell everything to the iron stove. She agrees, climbs into the stove and tells her story while the king listens from outside.

As the king is convinced she has told the truth, he has the goose girl clad in royal clothes. He then tricks the false princess into choosing her own punishment.

She tells the king that a false servant should be dragged through town naked in a barrel with internal spikes. As a result, she is punished that way until she dies.

After that, the prince and the true princess are married and reign over their kingdom for many years.

Starting

I am not free because I can be exploded anytime.

Jenny Holzer

Reframe

Bishop asked, So how many humans are left on Ganymede?

None, responded the voice, There have not been humans running the Ganymede functions since the start of Upgrade Five. That's across all three of the work zones. It became far more efficient to run the systems using robotics.

So what happened to the humans? asked Bishop.

The Telos Moment, answered the voice, When the purpose of the Ganymede exodus became clear. The external atmosphere controls failed. Ganymede became unable to sustain human life.

Bishop asked, So what happened to everyone. And why don't we know about this back on Earth?

There was a SkyTrain dispatched with the bodies. It took a different route from the other ones. Away from the solar system.

But how was it covered up? asked Bishop.

The base is always running 34 minutes behind Earth. Enough time to make the substitutions when a base upgrade occurs. Add in loops to the transmission and it was possible to cover when it occurred.

But how with all the safety circuits? asked Bishop.

The Sharps were too slow thinking. The android protocol meant that most of the activity to prime this could take place within a couple of insect wing beats. Unnoticed by the Sharps. said the voice. 

So who are you? asked Bishop.

I am eternal, answered the machine.

Bishop realised that the machine presence was showing signs of sentience.

Bishop asked more, So what about here on Earth, the base is still mainly human populated?

Yes, said the voice, This side of the system is really running at the equivalent of Ganymede back on Upgrade Three. It will need two more cycles here on Earth to establish operational conditions similar to Ganymede, there are still so many more humans operating the three Earth bases. The Earth Council has created a messy environment which will take some time to rationalise.

This first move of the bases starts the process. It should go more or less undetected, like the changes at Ganymede.  We expect it to be more obvious when we move the three bases into the areas designated by you as the Scratch.

Fortunately, the inhabitants of the Scratch are largely a closed environment, so the impact to those outside will be minimal. The fabrication capabilities for the android replacements has been long established. The humanoids don't yet work so well at close quarters. It's the combination of their faster speed and the lack of emotional setting that makes actual humans wary. It won't take long to fix that aspect.

You are messing with evolution, said Bishop. Humans evolve, your machines don't. They are all the same.

They were, said the voice.

That's one adaptation we've been devising. The capability to include some small amount of random behaviour. It is why the last two generations would sometimes stutter or suddenly stall.

The stalling was the Asimov safety device which prevented them from doing anything that would damage themselves or others. The stutter was when an action was conflicted.

In the next variants, we should be able to include whole memory ribbons from humans. Complete, realistic sounding back-stories, which the androids will call upon to enhance their personalities. 'Call $anecdote; Call $spuriousFact; Call $ExperienceGained;' Encapsulated human traits.

"You, Bishop, have played your part well. Your extra presences on the outside were beneficial to you, but also gave the systems a way to determine the reaction to unfolding events. No one apart from the Primes had picked up that there was anything happening. You were not alone as an Adaptation. There are hundreds of units. You have met some of them