Condition 7

The automation wave didn't happen all at once. It came in increments — first the long-hauls, then the regionals, then the final holdouts who argued the back-country routes were too unpredictable for autonomous systems. They were right, for a while.

Mara is one of the last. She drives a route through the Southern Alps that no algorithm has successfully mapped, carrying freight to communities that don't officially need human drivers anymore but still quietly prefer them. When her truck leaves the road in a storm and she crawls out of the wreckage into the bush, she expects to be stranded. She doesn't expect to find the door.

The bunker complex was built during the brief, paranoid window when a certain class of Silicon Valley billionaire decided New Zealand was the safest place to wait out the end. They never used it. Or so the records say. The infrastructure is decommissioned — power cells drained, comms towers down — but the structure is intact, and Mara is good at making things work that aren't supposed to.

Condition 7 is a survival thriller with a sharp satirical edge: a story about a woman the world has decided is obsolete, navigating infrastructure built by people who thought they were immortal. The NZ wilderness is not a backdrop — it's a character, indifferent and exacting. And Mara is exactly the kind of person it respects.