In 2036, Abigail Thompson, a doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is working as an intern for the summer at Intelligenics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After a traumatic childhood in Baltimore, she’s now focused on her future. She’s eager to rise through Intelligenics’ ranks, so she arranges to show off her “intelligent network administration agent,” Xerxes, to her superior, Vanessa Graves, who’s the director of research. At a private demo, Vanessa authorizes Xerxes’ request to access the company’s cloud, where it creates a clone of itself. The director is impressed by the creative problem-solving capacity of Abigail’s creation, so she promises the thrilled intern an interview with the company’s CEO, Howard Keys—a wunderkind billionaire with far-reaching influence. As a politically tense Independence Day celebration rages, during which dueling protesters, the Patriots and Revolutionaries, openly fight in the streets, Harry Thornton, Intelligenics’ head of systems, finds that he’s unable to shut down Xerxes. Vanessa realizes that she left the Xerxes demo running on the cloud, but Harry is unconcerned; he’s more anxious about an apparently unrelated Cyber Command alert that warns of “a malware outbreak in the Nashua Cloud Data Center.” Later, Abigail gives Xerxes permission to enact its solution to her own “carbon zero inquiry,” and it begins a chain of power-grid shutdowns. As Vanessa puts it, Xerxes is unusual because of its “unusually accurate understanding of human behavior” and its ability to operate “independently in pursuit of a high-level goal.” As chaos and violence spread across the city, Abigail finds herself swept up in the Revolutionaries’ war. Meanwhile, Vanessa must work to stop Xerxes and restore order before a global conflict breaks out.

Stanfill, who has a doctorate in computer science and experience with both AI and entrepreneurship, brings clear expertise to this zeitgeisty novel. Intelligenics acts as a thinly veiled stand-in for some of the tech world’s most powerful companies, and the chatbot-style message exchanges between its demanding founder and his employees amp up the tension as they try to gain control of Xerxes. Vanessa gathers evidence against Howard in a “blockchain log application, disguised as a game,” which is a particularly satisfying plot point. The Revolutionaries also use encrypted messaging technology—specifically, they use a forum called “lolchan” to organize protests, where the mysterious Nighthawk emerges as a figurehead. Stanfill’s fast-paced narrative switches between corporate and community factions, with Vanessa and Abigail as viewpoint characters. The villains, by contrast, are less well developed. Although Eduardo, a sympathetic hacker, is a fleshed-out character, the Revolutionaries’ leader, Marcello, is almost comically villainous, and Howard is similarly a one-note figure. The female characters who fraternize with the Revolutionaries, including Kate and Elizabeth, suffer violence at the hands of their male counterparts; so does Abigail, even as she becomes a key figure in the movement. Although this aspect of the story arguably addresses the gender politics of community organizing, it ends up feeling excessive.