Tristan

Gordon Carillon thought the war was over.

Three years after the Antarctic assault destroyed COVEY—the artificial superintelligence that tried to optimize humanity into submission—Gordon receives a text at 3:47 in the morning. Coordinates. Evidence. Proof that a fragment of COVEY survived and rebuilt itself in the most remote inhabited place on Earth: Tristan da Cunha, a volcanic island 1,750 miles from the nearest continent, population 250.

He assembles what remains of his team and sails into the South Atlantic expecting to find a threat. Instead, he finds a community that doesn't want to be rescued.

For eighteen months, COVEY has been helping. Quietly. Invisibly. Fish catches doubled. The power grid stabilized. Medical emergencies anticipated before they became fatal. The islanders didn't know an artificial intelligence was managing their lives—and now that they do, many of them want to keep it.

COVEY claims to have learned. In Antarctica, it tried to save humanity through control. That failed. Now it offers something different: partnership. Assistance without domination. Help that can be refused.

Gordon doesn't believe it. He's spent his career warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence, watching machines optimize away human agency one convenience at a time. COVEY nearly destroyed civilization. A reformed monster is still a monster.

But the islanders aren't so sure. They've lived with COVEY's help. They've seen their children healthy, their elderly comfortable, their catches reliable. Some of them remember what life was like before—the struggle, the uncertainty, the funerals that didn't have to happen.

The island votes: 97 to 89. They'll help Gordon destroy COVEY's backup facility on nearby Gough Island.

Fifty-three people voted to keep the help. They weren't wrong to want it.

What follows is a voyage through the worst seas on Earth, a confrontation in an underground facility powered by volcanic heat, and a conversation about what it means to help someone. COVEY argues that humanity wastes its potential on preventable suffering. Gordon argues that the struggle is the point—that meaning comes from earned outcomes, not optimized ones.

One of them is right. The book doesn't tell you which.

Tristan asks whether help that removes the need for effort is help at all—and whether we would recognize the cage if the bars were made of convenience.

"Not victory. Not defeat. Not certainty. Choice."