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.