Nu Trilogy 1: The Esss Advance Read Online Free PDF Page A

around to point what was left of his legs toward the door. “Okay, let’s get you downstairs to the computer lab so Larry can get you set up properly.”
     
    Sted knew things were moving rapidly, but somehow, he didn’t care. He knew he would make the effort to write to Lorraine and Jeremy’s families, because that was his responsibility. That was about the extent of his plans. After that he just wanted to curl up into a ball and escape the pain of their loss.
     
     

Chapter 10 – The Newsies
     
    The print media was almost dead. Everyone relied on one or more forms of electronic media to catch up on the day’s news and events. That was the problem. If you controlled all forms of electronic media, you controlled the flow of information to almost everyone on the planet. This was particularly true in the North American Union (NAU) and especially in the larger cities like New York City, Chicago, Mexico City, and Los Angeles. The masses in those cities had to be kept in the dark about any bad news to prevent possible rioting and looting. Freedom of the press had been thrown out the window with the NAU in control of the vids and the Internet.
     
    The only exceptions were the splashy tabloids found at all of the grocery stores’ checkout lanes and in most bodegas around the city. Very few people believed what they read in the tabloids, but it was too much fun to read and speculate about the rich and famous celebrities around the country and around the world.
     
    The “Insider” knew that many important stories were suppressed in the electronic media, so he decided to go with Plan B. He would leak the information to someone in the tabloid print media. By the time it got out, it would be too hard to suppress the story.
     
     
    Tendrils of the hot and muggy summer afternoon seemed to find their way past all the defenses of the small, ramshackle offices of the New York Rag . The building on Canal Street in Manhattan had definitely seen better days, and the central air was fighting a losing battle.
     
    Richard Collins could barely afford the rent for the upper two floors above the ancient Burger King at street level. The top floor held what was left of the Rag’s assets, which consisted of little more than a few desks, overflowing file cabinets, four workstations, and ten-year-old communications equipment necessary to transmit each edition of the Rag to Splash Printing.
     
    The fourth floor was not much better than the fifth. Richard’s apartment mirrored his life. Every piece of furniture had seen better days, and the dust collecting in the corners and under the bed whispered of sadness and decay.
     
    If the circulation of the Rag did not pick up soon, the paper would go the way of Richard’s marriage. That would mean that his five employees would be out of a job, and several of his bloggers would lose their main source of income.
     
    A change was needed, and Richard was keenly aware of this fact, but the direction of that change was a mystery to the only son of the founding editor of one of the few remaining tabloid newspapers on the island. Tomorrow morning’s edition was a wrap, but Richard knew the stories were tepid at best. What could he do to breathe some life into the Rag ?
     
    The incoming mail notification sounded from the iBlog server right next to his desk. The train whistle sound had been set up by his father to indicate the arrival of a story from a blogger of unknown origin. It was a sound that the walls of this office had not heard in years.
     
    Richard woke up his workstation and logged onto the server, thinking this was either an omen of good things to come or the death knell of his paper.
     
    The lead on the blog read, “Space Navy Scrambling.” The blogger identified him or herself as “The Insider,” which was intriguing. What followed was a comprehensive story of how the United Space Navy (USpN) was having a difficult time organizing a last-minute asteroid redirect mission (ARM) for a