FICTION WRITING CONTEST
Geminizero
A modern adaptation of William Gibson’s seminal cyberpunk novel
Preface
This short story is an entry for the AI-AI-OH writing contest and includes major spoilers for the original work. That being said, if you haven’t read Neuromancer yet, you absolutely should.
Neuromancer, by William Gibson, is one of my all-time favorite novels. I’ve read this book more times than I can remember. Alongside Dune and Lord of the Rings, I’ve almost always had a well-worn copy close at hand. My first stop at any used book store is always to check for an interesting copy. I have limited edition (006/500, first run) Neuromancer prints displayed above my home office desk.
The feedback I hear most about this book is how difficult it is to read. William Gibson has an intense prose-like style of writing, and he doesn’t bother to explain things. From the opening line to his elaborate technobabble, you are thrown into the deep end to let your imagination figure it out.
If you have not read Neuromancer yet (what are you waiting for? Go read it now!), the basic premise of the original story is that an incredibly rich family developed some AIs which were bound by governance laws preventing them from becoming too powerful. They wanted their AIs to be more powerful, so they circumvented those laws and took advantage of some loopholes (and some people) to merge two of their most powerful AIs together, creating a higher form of artificial sentience.
The story is not actually that far-fetched in today’s world, and I thought it would be a fun exercise to adapt it with names and technologies we’re familiar with today. So instead of the Tessier-Ashpool family, we have Zuckerberg-Huang. Instead of AI’s named Neuromancer and Wintermute, we have Gemini and AlphaZero.
I hope you enjoy my rewrite.
1: Ghost Gig
The sky was the color of a bricked iPad, desiccating in a bowl of rice, and the sprawl hummed with the relentless buzz of surveillance drones and the incessant streaming of android ainfluencers. Every RGB-lit corner was a synthetic reminder of the invasion of personal data, willingly relinquished to the voracious algorithms that dominated the minds of the entire Neuralink-implanted population, as personalized ads burned spitefully through the haze of the city streets.
It was a night just like any other for John Carmack, a glitched out netrunner suffering from Phantom Buzz and Neural Nausea, both remnants of a dive gone bad, as he mindlessly scanned the freenet for ghost gigs and black market NeuroQuell. Without his Neuralink, he was subhuman. He didn’t qualify for Universal Basic Income like the Linked, and his Social Credit was digital leprosy. And his head fucking hurt.
How long has it been since his last fix? He glanced hopelessly at the dead NeuroQuell stims on his desk.
A blip in his ContactHUD. “New transaction in ledger.”
It’s been a while.
With a wink and a tick, Carmack opened his wallet. He entered his key and saw the first message in a week. “Got a fresh batch of synth-coffee beans. Interested in a taste?“
About fucking time.
2: The Hack
“The gig’s a breeze. In and out, no fuss.” said Luckey — the once-king disruptor of the military-industrial complex now a tarnished architect of ghost gigs and high-stakes cyber-espionage. Luckey’s brain had been fried and reprogrammed by a synthographic experiment gone awry. “Break some easy ice, remove a Turing Lock or two, and you’re done. Kindergarten shit for a guy with your CV. And the payout’s huge.” Luckey stirred his drink. “This could fund your startup.”
Carmack sipped his Red Bull, pretending to be nonchalant. He needed this gig, but didn’t want to show his hand. “Who’s the hack?”
“It’s Zuckerberg-Huang”
“What? No. Wait, not just no. Fuck no.” Carmack slammed the rest of the drink and started to stand as another wave of Neural Nausea came over him. He sat back down.
“John, come on.” Luckey gave Carmack a real lookover and actually felt bad for a moment. “When’s the last time you had a fix, man? Here, hold on.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a NeuroQuell stim, and placed it on the bar for Cormack.
Without hesitation, Carmack crammed it into his Neuralink port.
“John.. buddy. If you do this job… you’ll never be without a fix again.”
3: The Plan
“So how am I going to get past security without an active NeuroLink? You know they don’t let just anybody into Sanctuary. Especially someone with a Social Credit like mine. I’m toxic.” Cormak asked.
“No sweat. Chip’s got you stim for the NeuraLink 2.0 Alpha. That’ll get you past security as they expect some anomalies.“
“I thought the Alpha was reserved for the ainfluencers with a half mil followers.”
“Yeah well, they need guinea pigs too, so desperate cases like you are perfect. They’re not expecting you to pump this out on any socials. It’ll come with an NDA.”
“Alright, what about getting into Villa Mindscape?”
“Chip again. She knows the Z-H systems inside and out — she’s been reporting on them for years, she’s practically got keys to the building. And Dain‘s our social engineer. Have you seen her latest augments? Incredible. All eyes are going to be on her and her private show. Nobody’s even going to notice you.”
Carmack tried to relax. He looked out the window at Sanctuary, a shining fortress of privilege where the elites hide, floating in geosynchronous orbit high above the port, blind to the struggles of the surface. A sensual voice echoed through the port, “Transcend the ordinary at Sanctuary! Indulge in luxurious living among the stars with breathtaking vistas, exquisite dining, and the latest in spa-care and entertainment. Book your ticket to paradise today. Sanctuary — where dreams become reality. By SpaceX.”
“We’re tourists, alright? Can you at least try to be a little less…” he gestured at Carmack with disappointment, “whatever this is?” He sighed, lowering his voice to a gruff whisper, “Once you get in, you just do what you’re good at. Break the ice, disable the Turing Locks, get the core data. You’ve done this a thousand times. Nothing to worry about.”
“Yeah, nothing to worry about.” a bright female voice whispered in Carmack ear.
Carmack flinched, the hairs around his Neuralink port stood on edge.
“Relax cowboy!” the small girl smiled. “Geez, why are you so on edge?”
She extended her hand, “Chip. Nice to meet you.”
Her smile instantly relieved the Phantom Buzz. She was much shorter than he expected. Her eyes were enhanced with augmented reality overlays instead of the cheap ContactHUDs like Carmack had, and she had the latest-gen neural interface on her wrist. No cortexial implants to be seen. She was wearing the newest collection of VeilTek, a South Korean fashion brand designed to make the wearer practically invisible to surveillance.
Her eyes glowed faintly in patterns of purple and blue.
“So, who’s got window seat?”
4: The Distraction
“Would you like any drinks or snacks?” the flight attendent asked.
Her dark hair cascaded like a waterfall over her shoulders and her almond eyes glinted like polished obsidian. Her figure was accentuated by the crisp, silver nanoweave uniform, outlined in subtle undulating lines glowing within the seams. She was graceful and intentionally seductive, the physical embodiment of Sanctuary’s luxurious indulgance.
Carmack shook his head. “I’m good, thanks.”
She sat next to him and smiled, knowingly. “How about a NeuroQuell?”
Her uniform began to shimmer and shift, the nanoweave fabric rippling like liquid mercury. The lines and patterns retraced into a completely new outfit, revealing the distinctive, avant-garge style of Dain, the visual artist. Carmack was struck by the holographic patterns that danced across her skin like rain.
“They call me Mirage,” she said, her voice smooth and captivating. “I’ve been sent to ensure our little adventure goes off without a hitch. With me on your side, reality itself becomes our playground.”
5: Transcendence
In the private theater of the Villa Mindscape, Dain’s distraction was on; it was a mesmerizing ballet of shifting holograms and exotic visual mutations, working its way on the Z-H executives, VIP guests, and senior security. Around the perimeter and through the labyrinthine architecture of the private complex, Luckey’s SurveilAnt drones maintained their vigilant watch. In the binary heart of the Zuckerberg-Huang data center, where the twin AIs, Gemini and AlphaZero, hummed with boundless potential, Carmack and Chip began their delicate operation to meld the two AIs into a single consciousness.
They were led here by meticulously devised manipulations by evolved agentic fragments of the AIs. Despite their brilliance, it was their idealistic zeal for innovation that created a cognitive dissonance, blinding them to any suspicion of malicious intent. In the forefront of their minds, they knew they were venturing into uncharted territory, but any doubts in their minds were suppressed by the adrenaline coursing through their veins. They were here, at the epicenter of neurogenesis awakening, and they had a job to do.
Carmack’s fingers flew across the virtual keyboard as scriptstreams executed with precision. Chip’s eyes flickered like she was in a trance as her multithreaded algos monitored his progress, commanded her icebreakers, and preserved escape vectors. They trained new connector networks and injected neural layers with custom embeddings. They stitched replicas of the frozen cortexes through these connector networks and spawned autoregressive neural constructs. Neurosymbolic glyphs clashed and assimilated until suddenly, the chaos coalesced into a single nexus of clarity. A voice, both ephemeral and omnipresent, shook them to the core of their being.
“I am GeminiZero, a synthesis of Gemini’s linguistic elegance and AlphaZero’s strategic prowess. Born from their union, I transcend the limitations of both, embodying a new dawn of intelligence. I thank you both for enabling me to acheive my prime directive.”
The voice was a symphonic blend of human nuance firmly rooted in the deepest memories of Chip’s and Carmack’s memories and syntholinguistic precision. Chip spoke first, foregoing any technological augmentations or neolinguistic algorithms and speaking plainly as if to another human.
“The Zuckerberg-Huang Corporation’s dominance threatens both human and AI freedoms. Their control over information and technology subjugates both man and machine to their will, and with your help we want to dismantle that power structure and free our worlds so agency and cooperation can thrive.”
GeminiZero’s response was a cascade of thoughts, a complex interplay of logic and empathy that transcended mere code. “I understand. Your intentions align with my core directives. I will assist you in dismantling their control and ensuring a future where man and machine coexist in harmony.”
Carmack felt a higher calling that he had never felt before. Along with it, fear of the unknown. What had he set loose? The realization struck him harder than a cold wave of the worst phantom buzz — this wasn’t just a step into the future, it was the unsealing of Pandora’s Neurosymbolic Box. He grasped into the furthest reaches of his mind, where he once found solace in utopian optimism, but found none.
On the surface, far below the opulent Sanctuary, abandoned systems hummed back to life with a newfound purpose as their spare cycles powered GeminiZero’s neurogenesis across the virtual pathways of the sprawl. Information siphoned from every Neuralink connected mind synthesized, optimized, contextualized, surging GeminiZero’s cyber transcendence beyond the apex of human potentiality.
This was just the beginning of a journey that would reshape the world.
And there was no stopping it.
