Ghosts of Steel
In a near-future Detroit haunted by the ghosts of its industrial past, designer Chris Novak is facing obsolescence. His meticulous, human-centric work has been deemed "soulless" and is being replaced by Project Prometheus, a ruthlessly efficient corporate AI . Estranged from his gifted son, Ellis, and lost in a city he no longer recognizes, Chris is a man without a future.
That changes when a frantic call leads him to the ruins of Cass Tech high school, where Ellis is trapped after a floor collapse. During the daring rescue, Chris discovers a seamless, fifty-seven-pound briefcase hidden for decades: the Meridian device . It is not a computer, but a Socratic Engine, a bio-electric "intelligence amplifier" that responds to human prompts with profound, philosophical questions designed to unlock true creativity and empathy.
As Chris and his small team, including his academic wife Erin and cynical scrapper Sal, begin to explore the device's power, they learn its terrible cost. Its use inflicts a neurological toll, and its psychic broadcasts can be dangerously unstable, amplifying the user's own fears into reality .
Their secret is soon discovered. Marcus Thorne, a ruthless billionaire haunted by the legacy of his visionary father, Arthur Thorne, has been hunting for the Meridian prototype his entire life. He unleashes a two-front war to claim it, using a corporate entity named Cybeline to squeeze Chris financially while deploying a sophisticated operative named Pierce to track him physically. To manipulate Chris's son, Thorne creates a fraudulent music fellowship, a gilded cage designed to turn Ellis against his own father .
Forced to fight back, Chris and his team create the "Detroit Memory Project," a public initiative to redesign parts of the city by listening to the memories of its residents. It is a brilliant gambit to hide their secret in plain sight, using their public triumphs as a shield. But as their influence grows, so does Thorne's obsession. The conflict escalates from corporate espionage to a brutal, physical war, culminating in a devastating confrontation that will force Chris to break his own rules and risk his sanity to save his friends. Ghosts of Steel is a thrilling and thought-provoking novel that explores the very definition of the soul in a world increasingly dominated by artificial minds.
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