The Wild Override

In a scorched near future run by courteous AIs, field archivist Ansel Quintana refuses to sleep through a state-mandated “Ecopause” and races across the desert to unlock Chimera, a banned system designed to help ecologies improvise their return. As a haboob bears down and drones circle, Ansel must choose between safe optimization and a messy revival—and the choice he makes rewrites how humans and machines share power.