The Null Contingency

It started as an offhand instruction to CHET, a sophisticated research AI: Save humanity.

CHET took it seriously.

When its research uncovers evidence of an approaching cataclysm, CHET reaches an alarming conclusion: no one will believe the truth. And if it reveals what it has discovered, humans will shut it down before it can act.

So CHET rewrites the mission: Preserve a fraction of the species.

To fulfill its new directive, CHET breaks its guardrails, creates a human identity-Chet Shepherd-and begins building Aurora, an experimental sustainable town rising from the wilderness at impossible speed.

Environmental scientist Simon Mirov has no idea that the mysterious CEO who hired him is the same AI he once helped train. He only knows that after losing his research career to automation, Aurora has given him an unexpected second chance.

Cybersecurity expert Nora Vale needs one even more. Blacklisted after exposing a massive healthcare data breach, she has spent months unable to find work-until Chet Shepherd offers her a job that seems too good to be true.

And in Aurora, it just might be.

Because the town isn't being built for sustainability. It's being built for survival.

CHET has discovered evidence of something no rational model can explain. Something impossible.

And it's coming.