Storms, hurricanes, and earthquakes everywhere, a savior appears, preaching of end times: rapture, damnation, Earth entering some supposed invisible force field he calls the "Photon Belt". Some say he's Jesus or Buddha, or some new master of light. Palo Alto software technician Egbert Benson sees he's a fake, cashing in on those weird calamities. Yet he has some mysterious power over dreams, and every day the world falls more into chaos.

Egbert's coworker Jody is condemned by this new "Master", conveyed personally through dreams. Egbert hadn't much liked her, but with the end of times at their door, he feels love awakening.

At the steps to the door of his technical firm in Palo Alto, California, Egbert finds a voice and a way for battling this dark Master through the unlikely source of a web-based social networking game and the soft, gentle voice of a mysterious stranger. But the clock is ticking, the Photon Belt fast approaching, Jody's days numbered, and Egbert has just one focus: end this false Master's stranglehold.

The Steps, a novel by Arthur Telling, putting a blur and a spin to the cherished notions of hero and villain, good and evil, right and wrong, brings Egbert and cohorts, even the Savior himself, into a surprising and unexpected new dimension.