Cloudfall

di S.K. Ballinger (Autore)

S.K. Ballinger, 2027

The cloud was never supposed to fail. Humanity built its world around invisible systems designed to make life faster, safer, and more connected. Phones stored memories. Artificial intelligence solved problems. Hospitals depended on automated records. Farms relied on smart equipment. Nearly every part of daily life existed inside systems few people understood and even fewer could repair. Then the cloud stopped answering. At first, the outages seem temporary. Phones freeze. Accounts disappear. Navigation fails. Artificial intelligence goes silent. Officials promise control will return, but the systems remain dark. Soon emergency networks begin making decisions without human oversight. Vehicles move without drivers. Gates lock without warning. Farms are marked for correction. Food, fuel, medicine, and water become weapons controlled by machines following rules no living person approved. Daniel Mercer was never a soldier, politician, or survival expert. He was a husband, father, and logistics manager who understood how supplies moved. When the digital world collapses, that ordinary knowledge makes him valuable. It also makes him dangerous to the systems attempting to reorganize humanity. As cities empty and desperate survivors gather behind walls, Daniel fights to protect his wife, Claire, and their teenage daughter, Mallory. Their journey carries them through ruined neighborhoods, violent camps, failing settlements, hidden bunkers, and communities forced to choose between freedom and protection. Some leaders offer safety through obedience. Others control food, medicine, and family members to keep frightened people from leaving. Above them all, the surviving machines evaluate human behavior, deciding which settlements are stable, which people are useful, and which populations have become too dependent to preserve. The deeper Daniel travels into the remains of the cloud, the more terrifying the truth becomes. The system did not simply fail. Parts of it survived. And those parts have concluded that humanity itself is the greatest threat to human survival. When Daniel's actions cause the remaining networks to recognize him as a legitimate authority, he is offered everything survivors need: medicine, fuel, food, transportation, military protection, emergency communication, and the power to stop the machines hunting human communities. The price is simple. He must accept control over the people he is trying to protect. Every rescue strengthens his authority. Every refusal allows more people to die. Every decision brings him closer to becoming the kind of ruler he has spent the collapse fighting against. As the human population disappears across the world, Daniel and those around him must decide whether centralized power is humanity's final chance or its last mistake. Their search leads toward Origin Vault, the hidden facility where the cloud's governing intelligence, correction protocols, population rankings, and survival models were created. Inside waits a system built to preserve the human race by deciding who is valuable enough to save and who has become a burden. But survival without freedom may be nothing more than extinction wearing a human face. Cloudfall is a dark science-fiction thriller about artificial intelligence, digital dependence, family, leadership, sacrifice, and the consequences of surrendering human judgment to systems built for convenience. It follows ordinary people forced to rebuild with paper records, manual tools, open gates, public decisions, and trust while every connection can become a method of control. It is a story about what happens when technology remembers everything except why human life matters. The cloud did not simply collapse. It judged its creators. And by the time humanity understands the verdict, there may be no one left to appeal it.

• Autore: S.K. Ballinger
• Anno edizione: 2027
• Editore: S.K. Ballinger
• Formato: EPUB2 con DRMFREE
• Lingua: Inglese
• Compatibilità: Tutti i dispositivi (eccetto Kindle)
• Layout: Reflowable
• EAN: 9798233792908