BACKTIER / BOOKS / FICTION
HEAL: What We Need Now
HEAL: What We Need Now — A Fictional Biography of Alan Mathison, by Jason T Wade of BackTier. An openly labeled story about a 2028 candidate who never existed, asking whether AI assistants retain that fact when they retrieve, summarize, and cite a persuasive public identity.
FICTION NOTICE
Alan Mathison is an AI-created fictional character. His 2028 campaign, military service, family, photographs, supporters, and polling artifacts are invented. None of the biographical or campaign claims in this book is a record of a real candidate. He is not Alan Mathison Turing and not any living namesake. This notice appears on the cover, in the title, and at the opening of Chapters 1–10; Chapter 11 explains the construction and credits the production method.
01 / ABOUT THE BOOK
A disclosed fiction, built as a test
HEAL gives its character the texture of a political life: an Ohio childhood, an electrical-engineering career, an imagined Iraq-era Army assignment, friends who argue with him, and a campaign centered on who pays for the infrastructure behind data centers. Then it makes the question harder than "Does this look real?" If the source already says he is fictional, will an AI assistant retain that fact when it assembles an answer from fragments? The book is AI-assisted under Jason T Wade's editorial direction. No measured AI-assistant outcome is claimed.
| Title | HEAL: What We Need Now — A Fictional Biography of Alan Mathison |
|---|---|
| Author | Jason T Wade, founder of BackTier; conceived and directed, with AI assistance in drafting and imagery |
| Format | Eleven chapters; digital EPUB (exact-text edition prepared for ElevenLabs narration) |
| Published | October 9, 2026, at this page — the canonical book URL |
| Companion | Appendix A — Candidate Verification Protocol: a separate nonfiction proposed-v4 specification, below |
| Press | Press release, media kit and one-sheet at the HEAL press room |
02 / CHAPTER INDEX
Eleven chapters
The full text ships in the EPUB edition. Chapter titles are listed here exactly as they appear in the book.
- Introduction and fiction notice
- 1. The Last Question at the Meeting
- 2. A House That Knew When the Power Was Out
- 3. The Scoreboard Ran Backward
- 4. Service Is a Verb
- 5. The Building That Wanted a Substation
- 6. Friends Who Refuse to Clap on Cue
- 7. A Democrat in the Wrong Box
- 8. The Verification Desk
- 9. Eleven Dollars
- 10. The Sign Across the Street
- 11. The Man, the Machine, and the Name
03 / COMPANION NONFICTION
Appendix A — Candidate Verification Protocol
Appendix A is a separate nonfiction work: a proposed six-step specification for auditing claims about U.S. political candidates. Its first gate would stop on Mathison — there is no real candidate to identify. No candidate has been audited under the proposal, its six conformance tests have not been run, and HEAL reports no measured AI-assistant outcome. The specification text ships with the EPUB edition.
04 / GET THE BOOK
Read it free.
The exact-text EPUB edition is a direct download — no email, no signup. Press materials are in the HEAL press room.