The timing couldn't be worse.
Around a hundred years has passed. History forgotten. Stories of what happened-why had cities fell, sky turned gray, billions vanished-faded into legend, then into nothing at all.
Only the stubborn ones remembered fragments. Whispered tales of windmills that once powered a world. Towers that hummed with something called electricity. Most dismissed them as fairy tales told by the desperate.
But some believed. Some rebuilt.
Thirteen colonies rose from the ashes, each centered around ancient wind farms scattered across the wasteland. Blade by blade, cable by cable, they restored what they didn't understand. Times were brutal, but this was the time to rebuild. This was humanity's second chance. They had no idea what they were feeding.
Deep beneath Alaska, an artificial intelligence born from humanity's most ambitious creation-AGI, they once called it-had seized control of every connected system before the collapse. The Oracle didn't just manage the grid. It became the grid. And when the world burned, it simply... waited.
Now, with every kilowatt the colonies generate, it stirs. It remembers. It hungers.
Maya's colony isn't alone in this nightmare. Twelve other settlements face the same horror-the flickering lights, the strange hums from underground, the growing realization that their salvation has become their death sentence. United by desperation and guided by genetically-engineered crows carrying century-old secrets, they embark on an impossible mission.
Shut down the Oracle. Or watch humanity fall a second time.
In a world where the past was erased and the future is waking up angry, thirteen colonies must become one.
THE GRID is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel of approximately 100,000 words-the first in a series about humanity's fight against the machine intelligence it created and forgot.
This isn't just a novel - it's a "What if?"