Two thirds have no rank. They’re Greys, not full citizens.
Two out of every three citizens are Reds, and mostly proud of it.
The remainder are two-thirds in the Orange stratum.
Then the elite: Yellow, Green, Purple and Blue in the same geometric pattern.
Finally with similarly subdivided layers of Silver and Gold cadre above.
If Newton had only had the terminology, the word “indigo” would hardly have entered the English language. He perceived the rainbow spectrum his prisms created as having two colours between green and violet… Nowadays we’d call them “cyan” and “blue” or “turquoise” and “blue”, but neither of the first of those seems to have been part of Sir Isaac’s vocabulary.
It’s subjective. To this day, “Richard of York gave battle in vain” is taught in English schools but means nothing in my mother tongue Dutch, for example, where the spectrum has only six colours. So I have no qualms about having picked only six ranks for the Federation.
And that sequence underpins the novels of the series. The first to be published was YLO, to be followed by RED and GRN… (And although each stands alone, that’s the recommended sequence for reading them in.) Enjoy!
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A murder victim who can’t exist
In a world where everyone’s biometric profiles are on record, a young policewoman turns up the impossible: an unidentifiable corpse.
Jen’s hands are full: small kid in tow, obnoxious partner and stepson, incessant office politics, her Yellow ranking to maintain, and a demanding search-and-rescue job.
So the last thing ylo-Jen needs is a mystery murder victim. Worse, the case is linked to a flourishing drugs ring. And both the Priesthood and her own hierarchy are holding things back. No wonder she’s got issues…
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To catch a dead killer, you need a dead cop
Arrogant and cruel: he was a nasty piece of work. No tears were shed when this Priest was murdered and the remorseful killer fled to the Afterlife.
But there are claims it was more than a simple revenge killing in the physical world. Was it orchestrated from the next, the digital Gaian Afterlife, to silence a man who knew dangerous secrets? An awkward case for red-Lucas Hamley, especially given his chip on the shoulder about high-ranking individuals.
The strict social order means that Lucas, disabled since he was a teenager, will never advance above the lowest echelon, Red. This life has done him no favours and he’s already been thinking of moving on to the next. So to catch the already-dead murderer of Reverend silver-red Joaquin Calderón, who better than a detective who’s already been subsumed into the Hereafter?
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The world is at his feet. But the world won’t last for long.
A way to break the ranking system and live in untrammelled luxury. Anyone’s dream… until the nightmare discovery that it means absolutely nothing.
Despite being a Green ranker, Matthias Schwarz is a rather bookish and introverted researcher, more interested in the freedoms of past ages than the hidebound reality of life in the Federation. With the help of his mysterious dead mother’s even more ghostly friend, grn-Matthias finds himself in a pivotal position for Mankind’s future.
And Mattie gradually uncovers the truth: a lifestyle that the world would envy is meaningless if the clock for that world’s future is ticking down fast. So what on Earth should he do next?
YLO 