The Steel Report (Coming Soon)

“In thirty years, children will ask their parents and grandparents what it was like to live through the AI Revolution. I just don’t know if the question will be asked in a spaceship among the stars, or huddled around a fire in a cave.”

- Ross Petrov 

When Supreme Court Justice Anderson Coulter is assassinated on a college campus, the nation fractures overnight. States form new coalitions, militias rise, and the line between protest and war begins to blur.

John Steele, a combat veteran turned academic, is drawn into the chaos when he’s asked to help draft a framework for state sovereignty—a last-ditch attempt to keep the country from spiraling into a bloody civil war. But as the violence spreads, Steele uncovers a deeper manipulation—one that transcends politics and ideology.

All evidence points to political extremists on both sides of the aisle. Yet Steele begins to suspect someone else is pulling the strings: Ross Petrov, an eccentric tech billionaire whose vast AI empire seems to move according to a logic no one fully understands.

Both a taut political thriller and a meditation on meaning in the age of algorithms, The Steele Report explores what happens when the human mind, forged through struggle and scarcity, is forced to navigate the artificial but complex modern world - a world of online rage and division tearing a nation apart.  

In a contemporary literary experiment that blurs the lines between fact and fiction, the role of Petrov and his unseen intelligence was played by an actual AI.  

Chapter I: Dynamic Equilibrium

“Hang him! Lynch the fascist bastard!”

That was the moment Supreme Court Justice Anderson Coulter knew he was in serious trouble. The entire evening had been a catastrophe he wished he’d turned down.

The invitation to speak at the University of NorCal outside Oakland had come from the Student Coalition for Conservative Values - a group he’d never heard of. But James Vainville had insisted he go, overtly suggesting there were prominent names behind the invitation - names whose requests shouldn’t be ignored. Although he had never held office, Vainville was one of the most powerful men in Washington. Neither was he particularly wealthy. What he had, in abundance, was information. He was a kingmaker and master political strategist. Everyone on the right knew and listened to him.

Although Anderson was second-guessing his decision, he understood why he’d been invited and why Vainville thought it was a good idea. The recent Supreme Court ruling overturning the Ninth Circuit’s affirmation of California’s successful suit against “Big Oil” had caused an outrage. There was, naturally, enormous public interest in the case. Vainville and his shadowy political entourage thought it would be a good idea for conservatives to get out and champion the ruling. Energy development was one of their biggest initiatives and an important platform for the party.

From its inception, the litigation had been seen as a proxy fight between the existential perils of climate change and what many viewed as the willful ignorance of conservatives. For its proponents, the case was to prove once and for all Big Oil’s culpability in the climate emergency they claimed was ravaging the country. It would also have brought hundreds of billions of dollars in settlement claims to California’s empty coffers and helped offset the state’s growing deficit.

But the Supreme Court had negated the findings and, in the opinion of many, doomed the world to a fiery end. Through that lens, nothing could be more important. It was a fight for the very future of the planet.

Justice Coulter had penned the majority decision in the case, which he knew was wildly unpopular with the left. Yet as an African American, he had long enjoyed support from both sides of the aisle. 

Not anymore. 

The country had become more politically and ideologically divided than ever.

Barely fifteen minutes into his attempt to deliver the speech, it had been completely sabotaged by a mob of demonstrators who burst into the amphitheater. The interruption began as a chant, “Killer Coulter!”, but rapidly escalated as the crowd began throwing frozen water bottles at the stage. When fistfights broke out between the liberal mob and conservative members of the audience, campus police quickly decided to shut the event down.

It was then that Anderson noticed his detail of U.S. Marshals had disappeared.