This is an experiment in AI — I gave chatgpt a plot synapsis and a few basic pointers and let it run with it. It isn’t the story I would have created but it is surprisingly close on a few key points. The original had some flaws, I went back and forth with AI, altering and fixing parts. The story is better now, but still mostly AI written.
It bothers me that the funniest bit was written by AI with zero input from me.
Enjoy, or not.
—–
The rain had slowed an hour ago, but the highway still reflected the sodium lights in long yellow streaks. Special Agent Daniel Mercer drove north in a rented Buick with both windows cracked to keep himself awake.
Three months inside the Fellowship of the Last Door and all he had to show for it was a notebook full of harmless lunatics.
Not harmless, Quantico would say. Potentially destabilizing.
Mercer snorted softly.
The Fellowship lived in trailers outside Gallup, New Mexico. They stockpiled canned food, kerosene, antibiotics, and old engineering textbooks. They believed the universe was “thinning.” Their leader, Elias Vane, preached that catastrophe was educational. God taught through extinction events.
The Bureau had expected guns. Anthrax. Maybe dirty bomb components.
Instead Mercer had found amateur physicists and dehydrated potatoes.
The headlights behind him appeared without warning.
They stayed exactly four car lengths back for five miles.
Mercer checked the mirror again.
No variation.
Professional.
He eased his right hand toward the revolver beneath the seat.
The car behind him flashed its lights once.
Then twice.
Mercer pulled onto the shoulder.
The other vehicle—a dark green sedan of no identifiable make—stopped behind him. One man stepped out.
Average height. Gray coat. No umbrella despite the wet night.
The man approached slowly, palms visible.
“Agent Mercer,” he said. “Please don’t reach for the weapon. I’m not from your Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Mercer kept the revolver low beside his thigh.
“Then you’re making a very strange traffic stop.”
The man looked tired rather than dangerous.
“My name is Corvin. I need ten minutes. After that you may arrest me, shoot me, or drive away.”
“You know my name. That already costs you points.”
“Yes,” Corvin said. “But not as many points as the next sentence.”
He glanced toward the dark horizon.
“Your universe is called the Prophet Dimension.”
Mercer almost laughed.
Instead he said, “You picked the wrong cult member to recruit.”
Corvin ignored that.
“There are parallel realities. Not infinitely many. People always imagine infinity because they lack discipline.”
He spoke like a lecturer who disliked his students.
“The structure is arboreal. Every universe bifurcates approximately every fourteen minutes, though local relativistic effects blur the timing.”
“Branches.”
“Yes.”
“And you crossed over.”
“Obviously.”
Mercer leaned against the Buick. “Suppose I humor you. Why?”
“Because most new branches die immediately.”
Corvin crouched and drew lines in the wet dust with one finger.
“Tiny variations accumulate. Slightly altered nuclear constants. Vacuum instability. Incorrect asymmetry values after branching. Most universes collapse within seconds. Others survive years. Very few stabilize long-term.”
He drew one long line among many short ones.
“Your branch does.”
“And that makes us special.”
“It makes you infamous.”
The wind hissed across the desert.
Corvin reached into his coat and removed a folded sheet of paper.
Names.
Dates.
Mercer recognized several immediately.
Medieval visionaries. Radio preachers. Failed messiahs. Television evangelists predicting annihilation.
“All accurate,” Corvin said.
“None of those prophecies happened.”
“They did elsewhere.”
Mercer frowned.
Corvin continued.
“Your human brains occasionally form weak resonance with adjacent branches. Catastrophic events bleed across. Sensitive individuals experience them as revelation, dreams, divine visions.”
“So prophets see neighboring worlds die.”
“That was our first theory.”
Mercer noticed the wording.
“Was?”
Corvin stood.
Rainwater dripped from the sleeve of his coat.
“Prediction is not passive.”
For the first time, there was actual strain in his voice.
“Detailed predictions correlate strongly with adjacent branch failures.”
Mercer stared at him.
Corvin pointed toward the empty desert.
“Adjacent branches don’t fully separate immediately. There’s leakage. Correlation. But when millions of minds focus on the same specific catastrophe, the uncertainty collapses.”
Mercer said slowly, “You’re saying the prophecy causes the disaster.”
“Yes.”
“By being believed.”
“By being known.”
The highway suddenly felt very empty.
Corvin continued in the patient tone of a man explaining physics to a child.
“The stronger branch stabilizes. The weaker branch undergoes coherence failure. Physical laws decay. Vacuum transitions occur. Causality destabilizes.”
“And people here think the prophet was simply wrong.”
“Because your branch survives.”
Mercer looked again at the list of failed prophecies.
Not failed.
Victorious.
“Our dimension kills neighboring ones.”
Corvin gave a small nod.
“Repeatedly.”
Thunder rolled somewhere beyond the mesas.
Mercer folded the paper carefully.
“What does this have to do with Elias Vane?”
“He is approaching a major event.”
Mercer caught the wording immediately.
“Approaching?”
“His predictions are becoming increasingly specific.”
“That sounds like schizophrenia.”
“We can track the pattern.”
Corvin stepped closer.
“If Vane publicly delivers the prophecy tomorrow night, my branch dies.”
The sentence landed with absolute confidence.
Mercer stared at him.
“You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Corvin looked away briefly.
“We aren’t entirely certain.”
Bad answer.
Mercer noticed immediately.
“You crossed dimensions without understanding the mechanism?”
“We understand portions of it.”
Another bad answer.
Mercer said nothing.
Silence was often more useful than questions.
Corvin filled it.
“Information exchange between adjacent branches creates resonance effects. Some forms of widespread cognition appear capable of destabilizing weaker continua.”
“There it is,” Mercer said quietly.
Corvin frowned.
“You almost said it.”
“Said what?”
“That the prophecy causes the destruction.”
For the first time, Corvin looked genuinely uncomfortable.
Mercer felt the conversation shift.
The man had not intended to reveal that much.
Mercer pressed.
“The visions aren’t passive observation.”
Corvin remained silent.
“They’re weapons.”
“No.”
Too quickly.
Mercer saw it immediately.
Not the answer itself.
The speed.
“You’re lying.”
Corvin’s expression hardened.
“You have access to Vane.”
“There it is again.”
“Agent Mercer—”
“You need something.”
The wind hissed across the road.
Mercer stepped closer now.
“You can’t get near him yourself.”
Corvin said nothing.
Mercer’s thoughts accelerated.
Three months with the Fellowship.
Vane’s strange reactions to newcomers.
The old man occasionally freezing mid-sentence and staring at empty space.
Once, during a communal dinner, Vane had abruptly pointed toward a late-arriving traveler and said:
“That one’s wrong.”
Everyone had laughed nervously.
The traveler left the next morning.
Mercer looked at Corvin carefully.
“Vane can recognize you.”
Corvin did not answer.
“That’s why you approached me.”
Still silence.
Mercer nodded slowly.
“You need someone he trusts.”
Finally Corvin spoke.
“Dimensional transition leaves neurological artifacts. Prophets perceive them subconsciously.”
“So he’d know.”
“Yes.”
“And if you try to approach him?”
“He would accelerate the prophecy.”
Mercer almost admired the elegance of it.
Corvin had not come to warn anyone.
He had come to recruit an assassin.
“You want me to kill Elias Vane.”
“I want ten billion people to survive.”
“By murdering one old man.”
“Yes.”
The simplicity of the answer chilled him more than the claim itself.
Mercer asked quietly, “What exactly happens when a prophecy is spoken?”
Corvin took several seconds before answering.
“When sufficient numbers of observers focus on the same extinction scenario, adjacent branches undergo forced coherence.”
Mercer waited.
“The stronger branch stabilizes.”
“And the weaker one?”
Corvin looked directly at him.
“Destabilizes. The physics stops working.”
“How many times has this happened?”
“We don’t know.”
“But enough for you to study it.”
“Yes.”
“And enough for you to predict it.”
Corvin did not answer.
Mercer felt another realization forming underneath the conversation.
Slowly.
Coldly.
“You aren’t just trying to survive.”
Corvin’s face became expressionless.
Mercer continued.
“You’ve been researching this.”
Silence.
“You can induce these events intentionally.”
Still silence.
Mercer understood then.
Not refugees.
Strategists.
A dying civilization learning how to kill neighboring realities.
“You said your branch would die if Vane speaks tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“But if he doesn’t…”
“We gain time.”
“For what?”
Corvin answered too carefully.
“Stabilization efforts.”
Mercer almost laughed.
Transfer capacity remains theoretical.
That phrase surfaced from earlier in the conversation.
Not evacuation.
Transfer.
Replacement.
The pieces aligned all at once.
“You’re planning to destroy our branch eventually.”
Corvin said nothing.
That was answer enough.
The desert seemed suddenly enormous around them.
Every failed prophecy in human history.
Every predicted apocalypse.
Every rapture date.
Not mistakes.
Victories.
Mercer realized with growing horror that his universe might be alive precisely because countless others were not.
Corvin watched the understanding arrive.
“We only need a few more decades,” he said quietly.
Mercer’s hand drifted unconsciously toward the revolver.
Corvin noticed.
“If Vane speaks tomorrow, my civilization dies before our work is complete.”
“And if I help you?”
“Billions live.”
Mercer looked south toward the invisible Fellowship compound beyond the hills.
Mercer asked the final question.
“How many of your people are already here?”
Corvin smiled faintly.
“More than you think.”
The air behind him bent sideways.
Not bright.
Not dramatic.
Just wrong.
Like perspective itself had become unstable.
Corvin stepped backward into the distortion and vanished.
The desert fell silent again.
Mercer stood alone beside the Buick while rainwater dripped from the telephone wires.
Then he got back into the car.
Not north toward Albuquerque and his report.
South.
Back toward the Fellowship.
Toward Elias Vane.
Inside the tabernacle, the old prophet would already be gathering his followers.
Preparing to speak.
Mercer drove faster.
One way or another, a weapon was about to be fired
So, little bit of hyperbole in the afternoon comments, but I wonder how our author cadre feels about AI written stories.
My 2 cents is its a weak writer, BUT, no writer should ever suffer writer’s block again. Just lay out a short synopsis of a chapter, let AI write it, then rewrite it correctly.
I am speaking to you: GRRM.
Can AI write a better sex scene than you?
Yes.
Thats a question for a different glib.
Dear Penthouse,
I never thought this would happen to me. I was walking by the lingerie store, fiddling with ChatGPT, when lightening struck….
So I had this story bouncing around in my head for a few years. I never sat down to write it because I am just not good at that. I was doing some other stuff with AI so just decided to see what it would do with a short synopsis. And it wasnt the garbage I expected. It had some plot inconsistencies, but I was surprised by the amount of detail ot created. I worked with it on fixing the problems and rewrote a few bits, but I would say that 95% is AI generated
That is a lot of paragraphs.
My AI “contest” at work is going nicely. It actually crapped out a decent web application – or the beginnings of one.
Not sure why it did that.
I enjoyed the story.
I did too. I got to read a story that I really wanted to read and I didnt have to write it!
I liked it too
PS. nice story
I think when I get home tonight I will see if I can find my original prompt that the AI used.
I don’t understand why an inter-dimensional being would care about humanity as we know it?
There are a number of individuals and cultures that appear to me to be counter-productive in ways we usually associate with life and living.
In fact, today’s news reports had a long list.
Sometimes I wish I could quit the news.
I largely quit the news before the ‘rona. It’s great. I highly recommend it. Most of it is high frequency noise you can ignore. If there’s something important, you’ll find out anyway.
And the thing was, not following the news, I could identify the ways in which people were behaving irrationally I think because I was not being trained by the corporate press.
In my original “vision”, the meeting takes place in a hotel bar. I didnt include that in my prompt, so we got the roadside encounter instead.
Interesting premise. I can’t think of another sci-fi story that has it.
It reminds me a bit of the Dark Forest hypothesis: the universe is full of civilizations that remain radio silent lest they announce their presence and invite conquest by a more advanced species.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest
There are several sci-fi races bent on galactic/universal domination: the Borg, the Empire from Star Wars, etc.
There’s a board game called Universal Conquest, and another called Galactic Conquest.
my favorite video about how interstellar war might actually play out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tybKnGZRwcU
Changing the past (or altering the future) is a common trope in SF. The Terminator series is just one example. The City on the Edge of Forever is another. Bifurcated or multifurcated pasts and futures are less common. One I can think of off-hand if Pohl’s Coming of the Quantum Cats. I always felt that if one could time travel you couldn’t alter your own past, but you could alter the pat of an alternate or parallel timeline. This story fits that mold. The ‘He must die to save our timeline’ is an added wrinkle.
Marvel’s Time Variance Authority (mostly comics, but appears in the DisneyPlus Loki show, and possibly the Avengers: Doomsday movie, if rumors are to be believed), does this from the stance of they believe there is one “Sacred Timeline”, and when it splits, the time/dimension cops go to the point of the bifurcation and destroy the offshoot.
(which only goes to show that 90 years of comics will eventually use every genre idea somewhere I suppose)
As a reader, I tuned out and skipped ahead about twelve paragraphs. It is boring and formulaic. At twelve paragraphs I stopped bothering.
Would I have know it was AI without your divulging the secret? Dunno, but you should have not said anything, and just let us either guess or put it in as the last sentence, IMHO. But I will say that its, at, skill at paragraphs lets me think it learned writing by going through every story on Literotica.
Ah, not at.
What would you consider to be a ‘good’ story that would hold your interest? Anything that’s has been posted here in the past? Just curious. I found the premise interesting. As for the formatting, it seems to follow past stories posted here. I guess it’s WordPress.
Something that didn’t feel predictable. I will fully admit to not reading that much current genre fiction anymore, so it is more likely to be a me issue, but it didn’t grab my attention or cause a sense of urgency.
Thanks for replying. The problem I find with unpredictability in story lines is that too often the writer ends up having to perform a deus ex machina (sometimes more than once) to extract the narrative from the corner it was written into.
I kind of agree with Zwak. The formatting is awful and the story gets to where it is going, but it feels a bit forced. It was worse in the earlier versions.
But, I liked it and was surprised by how well it fit my vision. Like I said, its not the story I would have written but it was good for how little I gave it.
We know the proper way to fix the shortcomings in the story is to put a chick in it and make her gay.
I may suggest that to see what happens.
Interesting
A good starting point, something to build on. I would want a monster in there somewhere, but that’s just me.
You guys are sitting here trying to get AI to walk while I run. I First while AI continues to eat seconds for breakfast.
Interesting ideas behind the story. I’m still wondering about the manner or Corvin’s folk and why the conversation was so polite and honest.
AI can put together ideas, but I’m not sure it can come up with its own. They can, but very blurred ‘originality,’ I s’pose. I think AI could write stuff like I write but it couldn’t come up with the novel, non-textbook experiences and people I’ve met, situations I’ve been in.
Now, AI can perhaps *assemble* vignettes like that, but it’d be piecing them together from LLM’s look into the ~infinite stories people have shared about their own lives. I’m not sure AI can figure out why X got a lot of Likes and resonance, while Y and Z didn’t hit folk the same way. I can see AI stealing punchlines and trying them out to see what gets a laugh, and perhaps recognizing some patterns between those that resonate and those that don’t with readers /viewers.
It might be able to ‘get’ it 1/1,000,000 times by ‘luck,’ but I don’t think AI can produce those truly unique moments within a person’s life, and also so that person’s Unique Moment (UM) exponentially expands when shared with another and their own UM, and expand outward from there.
A UM can be something as small as the person you got a hot dog from, their clothes, face accent, words said or not, as everyday and boring as possible. (That’s still a UM, ain’t it? There isn’t another of those walking ’round. You can’t copy an actual experience. (You can copy the idea and work from there.)
AI can’t experience things (yet?), but it’s very clever at editing the ~infinite versions of reality humans have shared with it, and AI weaves them into a story that passes the Turing Test.
The Juice is playing well in the CFL tonight. I’d kinda prefer he wins, but I don’t really care. I’m already getting well more than I hoped going into a series I had no root-root going on.
I don’t recall OJ playing for either the Roughriders or the Rough Riders.
Yeah… I had no idea what he was going on about there.
Listen, Ricky. I’m already getting two birds stoned at once, here. Juice’s been squeezed.
*smacks face* In the spirit of not giving details about any ongoing game, I let folk know the Juice was playing, aka OJ Simpson, who was famous for being a Buffalo Bill (and the murder thing, and Naked Gun, and Hertz…but not now). So Buffalo. CFL is in Canada. So. Buffalo and Canada. Might just be Buffalo Sabres and some Canadian team they may be playing. Ah. The CanadiEns.
That wasn’t rocket surgery, folk. As it turns out, I not only got the Game 7 I was rooting for, but I got Game 7 OT.
Don’t worry. Cal won.
No shit.
In the words of Gavin Rossdale, lead singer of the band Bush, “There’s no sex in your violence.”
There is violence implied – but not sexy violence
Bush is one of those bands I like some tunes but I am kind of embarrassed about it, and I don’t own anything by them.
What is there to be embarrassed about?
I don’t really know.
Maybe all the squealing fangirls?
I’d be embarrassed by screwing that nanny too.
16 Stone is a fantastic, fantastic album. It also kinda bothers me, and, yep, the fawning girls are to blame.
Most upsettingly, they’re *correct* to fawn. I think I’da found many reasons to stay ’round mid ’90s Gwen Stefani. No Doubt’s first album is also fantastic in its own way.
Just bought it. There are some good, memorable tunes.
Previewed the 2nd album – nothing stands out.
But yes, Gavin was an absolute smokeshow in those days. Having no experience in that area, it is just weird.
I have no idea what I am watching here – the Mets have scored 10 runs in the 12th inning and the opposing pitcher who is like the 3rd in this inning is now throwing powder-puff lobs.
Or was watching… the cable went out apparently to ease Washington’s misery.
Is he trying to invoke The Mercy Rule?
Is there one? Dude was responsible for probably the last 4 runs – if there is a mercy rule I don’t know when it kicks in. Washington got one back and lost by only 9 runs.
I would suspect he is a position player sent in to preserve pitcher arms.
Mets @ Nationals
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 R H E
0 1 0 1 2 0 1 0 0 0 1 10 16 18 0
0 2 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 7 12 4
There’s a box score ya don’t see everyday.
The last Nats pitcher (Vivas) was an infielder — they apparently didn’t want to waste any more relievers. AFAICT, he has never pitched before in the majors.
lol It was certainly hilarious.
Using a non-pitcher in blowouts (especially extra inning blowouts where you’ve already used a lot of real pitchers) is SOP.
For example, Jake Bauers with the Brewers pitched in 9 blowouts in 2024 and 2025, with an ERA of 4.00 (not bad). Eight of those were losses, but the last was actually a win.
Bah, Habs advance.
I’d say neither team were a match for Carolina but those long breaks can be a curse.
We’ll see.
I have no idea who’s left and I might be done with the game this season anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah, I have no interest (or hatred) for anyone who’s left. Well, except maybe Vegas (hatred).
FWIW I have no ill will against the Habs or the Leafs for that matter. If I continue I will root for them over Carolina *spit*.
Here was the synopsis I gave to AI:
An FBI agent has infilitrated a cult to determine if they are dangerous. He has decided they are not. As he is leaving town to head home to report his findings, he is approached by a man who turns out to be from an alternate dimension. It turns out there are parallel dimensions, but they are not infinite. Each dimension branches off a new one approximately every 14 minutes. Most don’t survive, as the physics in the new one isnt valid. However, it turns out OUR dimension is called the Prophet Dimension, as doomsday prophets who predict the end of the world are all correct. They are just predicting the end of an alternate dimension, not ours. The traveler is concerned the leader of the cult is about to make a doomsday prediction and wants to kill him before he can do it. Twist to the story, the traveler dimension has determined that the prediction will kill their home dimension and they wont to stop or delay that until they are capable of destroying our dimension.
Tomorrow KY can rid themselves of that unprincipled hack Massie in favor of a true conser… hah hah hah.
I’ll take Massie over any Trumpcocksucker.
I’m watching the Gorn episode of STTOS. One the few clever things they did in ST:Enterprise is bring back that species, and kill one with artificial gravity, in an episode. Well that and casting Jolene Blalock.
I keep hearing Enterprise got better after a couple seasons but I am hesitant to watch because I *hate* prequels in general.
I liked Enterprise for the most part (except for the finale which was a dumpster fire).
I watched the first season but only sporadically after that. I was leery of a prequel but I give them credit for setting it up well. Unfortunately, the show didn’t gel and I lost interest.
Yeah don’t ever watch the last episode.
Nolan may be the only guy in Hollywood who doesn’t *have* to go in on diversity to make his movie. A lot of people are saying that. Maybe it’s the truth and he has the power to do as he pleases.
Regardless, I haven’t seen anyone point out the simple reality that if he wants his movie to win any awards, especially after backlash against Oppenheimer, he has to throw the gods of Hollywood a bone. Hollywood is highly political. You can see that by the way they’ve willingly and stubbornly pissed away money making shit no one wants to see. The way they’ve taken successful properties and killed them by skinsuiting them. And awards matter for the same reasons the rest of this shit does.
Maybe he IS woke, who knows. I do know that despite all the Batman crap where he made all his money and that I have *zero* interest in, he still has a number of movies I love – a remarkable feat.
I have Tenet on the back burner – is it any good?
eh. Tenet has some good bits, but it desperately needs to be re-edited at minimum. Washington Jr is not quite up to it either, imo – Chadwick Boseman would have held it together better.
And re the Batman stuff – funnily enough, Dark Knight Rises is about anti-woke as a director today can get, since the villain spouts quite a bit of woke-adjacent/leftist stuff, and is not just lying but uses it as a tactic to keep the populace quiescent.
I walked out of the movie theater showing Tenet. I could barely hear what was being said and even if I had known what various characters were saying it seemed incoherent.
But yea, Nolan has made some good shit.
This is the best I can do.
https://youtu.be/CDMs9TNdG8E?si=ynzTse5_GwNeIIIM
I refuse to believe that anyone who watched that move in the theater could even understand the dialogue given the godawful audio mixing.
It’s like Nolan heard the criticism that people couldn’t understand Bane and said watch this motherfuckers.
“I have Tenet on the back burner – is it any good?”
Fantastic question. I wanna rewatch Prestige. Memento was my favorite movie for a long time. He’s very good at his job. I’m hoping for a spectacle, when (if?) I see this one.
“The alleged gunmen in a shooting rampage that left three people dead outside a San Diego mosque have been identified as 17-year-old Cain Clark and 18-year-old Caleb Velasquez, according to a law enforcement source.
At least one of the suspects took a weapon from their parents’ home and left a suicide note that talked about racial pride, a law enforcement source told The Post.
—
Anti-Islamic writings were found in the suspects’ vehicle and “hate speech” was written on the firearms used in the shooting, according to the source.
A shotgun and gas can with an “SS” sticker on the side were located at the scene where the gunmen’s bodies were discovered.”
—
The three dead at the mosque were security guard and father of eight Amin Abdullah, who police say prevented more deaths, as well as a grocery store owner, and another man.
==========
https://nypost.com/2026/05/18/us-news/san-diego-mosque-shooting-alleged-gunmen-identified-as-cain-clark-and-caleb-velasquez/
White kids. They both killed themselves as well. Great Parenting Award. This already ended terribly, and it’s going to get much worse. Kid could be pulling a trans, but not stated. I s’pose I shouldn’t assume.
An SS sticker and they went after a mosque. They really didn’t learn any history. That unsurprising in California.
No picture of Velasquez, wonder why…
I wonder if adding a tag like “in the style of Herman Melville” or someone else long-winded might fix
The style choices like this.
That plague AI stories.
It’s the Shatner comma without the comma.
Entertaining.
Has some vibes of the Periferial and some other SiFi I’ve read.
Call it a writing prompt that can grow legs.
Made me look this song up. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l7C83s1JFNo&ra=m