Category : Surfing The Deathline

Eddie Cartridge, and Janelle Tan – Machine Intelligence researchers and former partners.

Separated following the takeover of their mutual employer, which saw Eddie made redundant, life has lead them to radically different outcomes. Eddie is homeless, unemployed, down to his last few dollars, and living under the streets. Janelle is engaged to their former employer, living in a penthouse, and travelling to work by helicopter.

Eddie has been offered a job – subvert a Machine Intelligence for a critical window of time. The job has a payday large enough that he can escape this awful city – a middle-class-authoritarian city state, where the streets are always clean, and welfare benefits are tied to medical tracking implants which monitor sobriety, amongst other things.

The first problem, is that Eddie is not fast enough to out-react, and out-think a Machine Intelligence. He’ll need an edge, in the form of The Deathline – a neuro-accelerating hallucinogen.

The second problem, Eddie has never used The ‘Line before, and has no supply contacts for this highly illegal substance. He must reconnect with Janelle, who consumed prodigious quantities during their time together, to find out if she still has access to anyone who can supply what he needs.

For Janelle, contact with Eddie has contained a revelation which forces her to question her recent past, and to reassess her relationship with her fiancé. Will she abandon her comfortable, “perfect” life, and be reclaimed by the world of The Deathline?

The world is one in which Machine Intelligence is the supreme power, where a failed nuclear strike has fractured America into three separate nations, Europe is stricken by secessionary conflicts, and new Machine Intelligence-equipped non-geographic distributed states are beginning to emerge.

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Once upon a time, in the near future, things were going well for software codemonkey & Machine Intelligence researcher Eddie Cartridge – gainfully employed, happy relationship, and a bright future ahead.

Unfortunately, he made the mistake of coming to the attention of a particularly unpleasant piece of software. Now, he’s an internationally wanted man, paralysed after a disastrous misstep with a neuro-enhancing hallucinogen known as The Deathline, and some shady characters are dragging him down a dark corridor, towards a blindingly bright room.

Meanwhile, his former partner is rediscovering her taste for the rush of The ‘Line, while introducing mortality to a great many Machine Intelligences at her employer, in pursuit of an answer to the question “Where’s Eddie?”.

This is the conclusion to Surfing The Deathline.

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In the near future, homeless, unemployed, former Machine Intelligence researcher Eddie finds himself at the mercy of a shady group of people who’ve kidnapped, or rescued him, from an even more shady government detention facility.

He’s also paralysed as a result of an overdose of a neuro-enhancing hallucinogen, has just found out he’s responsible for multiple deaths due to his latest piece of contract work, and that all the troubles in his life are due to a somewhat megalomaniacal Machine Intelligence, which has taken a personal interest in him.

All in all, not a great day.

Meanwhile, his former partner has just tortured her fiancé into unconsciousness, or worse, over a lie. Now, she’s preparing to revisit her old life, diving back into the dangerous world of The Deathline.

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In the near future, homeless, unemployed software codemonkey Eddie has taken a job disrupting a machine intelligence, as a last ditch option to avoid having his organs brutally repossessed over his student debts.

To get the edge he needed, Eddie turned to a powerful neuro-enhancing hallucinogenic – The Deathline, so named for its tendency to kill users. It gave him the edge he needed, but in his triumph, he forgot to heed the warnings about visiting one’s own memory.

Now, he finds himself paralysed in what looks like a hospital room. He can do nothing, as the machine intelligence who ruined his life to this point, offers a terrible deal. Life in a prison of stone, or of his own flesh – a cure in return for his cooperation.

That is, until someone, and a great many somethings, open the door.

Meanwhile, Eddie’s ex-partner is testing her suspicions that her fiancé, their former employer, has been less than truthful about the circumstances surrounding Eddie’s firing. She isn’t liking what she finds.

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In the near future, homeless, unemployed software codemonkey Eddie has found himself up to his eyeballs in student debt, in a city whose promise has become a prison now that his bank account has run dry

His only chance to repay the people who’ll take organs in lieu of payment, is to obtain a neural-enhancing drug known as “The Deathline”. With it, he will have the edge necessary to subvert a machine intelligence for an anonymous, paying client.

In this issue, Eddie meets with The Dealer, who will reveal the awful truth about the origins of The ‘Line. He also provides some important safety advice, which Eddie promptly ignores.

Finally, Eddie is ready to commence his run, but as he begins, he discovers to his horror that the series of disasters which lead to his current predicament may not have been as random as he believed, and that perhaps, you can never go home again.

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Sometime in the near future, software codemonkey Eddie is down to his last few dollars. Unemployed and living on, or rather under, the streets, he’s also facing “repossession” of his organs to cover student debts.

Now he’s been offered a job, a job that requires he risk his sanity taking an hallucinogen that’ll give him a chance at subverting a Machine Intelligence for a few critical minutes.

It’s called The Deathline, and he has to meet The Dealer to acquire it.

This book is published in DRM-Free Fixed-Layout EPUB format.

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