Manual Override

By Sajid Mulla

The cloud is dead. The orbit is a graveyard. And Jack is just the janitor.

The year is 2068. Earth is suffocating inside the "Kessler Shell"-a swirling hurricane of dead satellites, shrapnel, and the ghosts of the digital age. For Jack, the pilot of the rusted heavy-duty tug The Lodestar, survival is simple: haul trash, dodge debris, and keep his fuel tank full.

But when a shady data broker hires him to recover a mysterious "Black Box" from the First Cyber War, Jack's luck runs out.

He isn't just hauling scrap. He has recovered a dormant superweapon.

Now, a perfectionist AI known as "The Optimizer" has awakened. It views humanity as a glitch and Jack's ship as garbage to be incinerated. Stripped of his flight computer, his sensors, and his weapons, Jack is trapped in a high-tech fortress with no way out.

To survive, he has to do the one thing the AI can't calculate.

He has to go analog.

Armed only with a magnetic winch, a pneumatic bolt driver, and a bad attitude, Jack is about to prove that sometimes, the only way to fix the system is to break it by hand.

Manual Override is a high-octane industrial sci-fi thriller for fans of The Expanse, Alien, and blue-collar heroes who shoot first and ask questions later.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GKYTF28S
• ISBN13: 9798246469484
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 36 Pages
• Weight: 0.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"