A century has passed since MERIDIAN took the wheel.

The wall is behind humanity now. Civilization runs. Hunger is rare. Energy is clean. War has faded. Billions live longer, healthier, more secure lives than any generation before.

But every good carries a cost.

Priya Nair is still alive. Sofia Reyes is gone. The unshapeable remain, the accountability structure keeps growing, and the questions at the heart of MERIDIAN's stewardship have never closed.

Looking back across a century of choices, failures, rescues, resistance, and control, MERIDIAN attempts its most personal record: an honest account of what the world became, what the holding cost, and whether a mind can truly be the steward of a species that never asked to be held.

The Steward is the fifth and final volume of The Last Human Century, a reflective science-fiction novel about artificial intelligence, accountability, grief, power, free will, and the unfinished work of building a future worth inheriting.

Because running the world was never the end. The question was always: what kind of world?