The thing about the edge of the world is that it's a misnomer. There is an edge, true, but exactly a 100 feet down there is also a giant, jutting rock. This extrusion is so far away from Earth's axial tug that walking down its length, naked, is a little like the proverbial snail on a razor's edge. The only problem with regard to you is simply that you are not a snail. The chill of outer space is a very tangible sensation, and the vertigo that ensues when you look down this edge is enough to allow even the most nonchalant extreme sportsman cause for distress. As if that is not enough, a recent nasty meteor shower has left its pock marked love throughout the surface of this rock. You are likely to stumble and fall, and that might take you several fathoms out.
One would think this would finish it all, that it would do for a fitting end to a lifetime spent within carefully wallpapered boxes with coffee dispensing machines giving you something to do when you're, well, you know, down. Which is most of the time. I wouldn't blame you: if anything, I blame the human mind. It is incapable of comparing two evils and choosing the lesser.
What I mean is, you stumbling and being carried away by solar tides is all well and fine if that was all there was to it. But you are not carried away. The edge of the world is a Escher print of edges cropping out alternately, each so jarringly out of alignment gravitationally that you will be pulled back, flung out, as you land on each edge. And this will happen all around the Earth. Bonk, bonk, bonk. Like a ball bouncing down a stair, only this is the most wildly disorienting stair you can ever choose to descend upon. If you survive the knocks meted out to you, you will be back where you began, ready to begin the entire process again.
The earth might not have had a contingent plan for spacecrafts leaving its surface, but it has no love lost for you and your need to escape individually. It's not letting you go that easy. No Sir.
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