The Oxygen Statistic

Sasha Orin has spent eight years measuring the atmosphere. From orbit, she tracks the numbers that define the future - carbon levels, methane flux, the slow, stabilising arc of a planet in recovery. The data is precise. The systems are trusted. The trajectory is clear. Until it isn't. When a single reading refuses to align with everything she knows, Sasha does what she has always done: she investigates. What she finds is not an error, but something far more unsettling - a discrepancy embedded not in the atmosphere, but in the systems designed to measure it. As her search deepens, the question shifts from what is wrong to who decided it should be that way. Set aboard an orbital climate station and grounded in meticulous scientific realism, The Oxygen Statistic is a novel about truth in an age of systems - about the limits of measurement, the weight of knowing, and what it means to act when the data no longer aligns with the world you've been told to believe in. For readers of intelligent, slow-burn speculative fiction with a strong scientific core, this is a story about integrity, responsibility, and the cost of seeing clearly.