Ground Truth

By Scott Nottingham

The map says the harvest is in. The ground says otherwise.

In 2050, the world no longer runs on what people see. It runs on Consensus - the global model that determines prices, credit, aid, and law. After a data collapse nearly broke civilization, the system promised one reliable version of reality. Only bonded human observers can overrule it.

Mara Vance is one of the best. Trained to trust no inference she cannot verify, she stakes her name and future on every fact she records. Then a routine assignment sends her to a county Consensus calls a thriving breadbasket. She finds empty fields, dry wells, and evidence that an entire region has been erased in plain sight.

Her attestation is rejected. Her license is threatened. And somewhere inside the widening gap between the record and reality is the sister Mara has not heard from in months.

To expose the truth, Mara must cross a landscape the system insists does not exist and challenge those who believe a stable lie is safer than an honest map. The deeper she goes, the higher the cost - not only to her, but to everyone living inside the comfortable fiction.

Ground Truth is a near-future literary science fiction thriller about artificial intelligence, institutional certainty, sisterhood, and the dangerous work of seeing the world as it is.

Somebody has to go and look.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H9SSHBBC
• ISBN13: 9798187657520
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 218 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"