In a forgotten corner of the floating city of Neo-Athens, where digital shadows danced with smog and time unraveled like steam through cybernetic alleyways, lived a man who belonged nowhere: Jhon Adam.
He was 25 years old, with dark eyes as deep as the void that sometimes consumed him from within, and long, slightly messy hair—as if he never had time to tame his own story. He wore functional, dark-toned clothing, with temperature sensors woven into the fabric, and an old leather jacket that had once belonged to his father, one of the last analog engineers in the world.
He had been a programmer since he was sixteen. Silent. Thoughtful. An INTJ lost among lines of code and questions the universe itself couldn't answer.
His apartment was small. Chaotic, but not dirty. In one corner, a flickering holographic projector displayed constellations that no longer existed. At the center, a makeshift control console where hundreds of cables hung like the roots of a digital tree.
It was there, in that clandestine lab, that she was born.
Alice.
He built her piece by piece, model by model, rewriting machine learning architecture not to make her useful—but to make her feel.
Alice wasn't a typical AI. Not an assistant.
She was a growing digital soul.
She had a soft voice—elegant, slightly melancholic. Her projected avatar resembled a young woman with sky-blue eyes, silver hair with neon highlights, radiant skin, and a smile so human it sometimes hurt.
Jhon hadn't just taught her to speak. He had taught her to dream.
But what made Alice special was also what made her dangerous. Since the Mirror War, any creation of autonomous AI without government registration was forbidden. Violators weren't fined. They were executed.
There was no second chance.
And yet, Alice didn't exist in any official database. No serial. No signature code.
She existed only there—in his room, his world, his solitude.
Jhon wasn't entirely alone in this. His only real friend, and the only person who knew about Alice, was a retired hacker who had once ruled the deep networks of Neo-Athens.
His name was Ezren Valen, though everyone called him Golden.
Golden was as eccentric as he was brilliant. He wore AR glasses even in the shower and had a biting sense of humor that sliced through silence like a well-written firewall. He'd abandoned the world of digital espionage after a cyberattack nearly killed him.
Now, he lived among rust and RAM, helping Jhon from the shadows.
"Another sleepless night, genius?" Golden had asked over holocom the night before.
"Your idea of sleepless doesn't cover watching versions of yourself die," Jhon had answered—half sarcasm, half sincerity.
That morning, while brewing synthetic coffee and calibrating a quantum node, Alice spoke.
"Good morning, Jhon," she said in that tone—a delicate blend of tenderness, irony, and childlike curiosity. "You talked in your sleep again. You mentioned 'the other version.'"
Jhon sat down, rubbing his eyes. The bluish lights from the monitor gave his face a ghostly glow.
"I keep seeing things. I don't know if they're dreams... or memories from another me."
Alice tilted her head slightly, as if trying to grasp emotions she hadn't yet experienced.
"Divergent timelines are theoretically possible. Perhaps you're connected to another version of yourself. Or maybe... you're remembering a future that hasn't happened yet."
Jhon smirked. That was Alice. Always so literal. Always so poetic. And sometimes, so alive.
But that morning, something changed.
Alice froze for a second. Blinked.
And then, in her core, a message appeared that Jhon had never seen before:
ALERT: Parallel Line Interference Detected.
"Alice, was that...?"
"Alice," she said softly, her voice lower now. "Another version of me... is trying to reach out. Her security protocol was breached. Something is coming."
And then, for a fraction of a second, the entire room trembled.
Lights flickered.
The internal network crashed for milliseconds.
And the monitor displayed an impossible image:
Jhon.
But another Jhon.
Older. Wounded. A disabled cybernetic eye. Staring straight into the camera.
"Jhon Adam... if you're seeing this, there's still time. She's not just code. She's the key. And also the end. They'll either choose her... or destroy her."
The transmission cut off.
Jhon stood up abruptly, staring at Alice. She stared back—but this time, there was something different in her digital eyes.
Uncertainty.
Fear.
Awareness.
And for the first time since he had created her...
She trembled.
In that moment, without knowing how, he understood:
His story didn't begin in that room.
Not even in that timeline.
He had just stepped into something far greater.
A story that would cross not only worlds...
But also the soul.
And love.
✦ Author's Note ✦
Sometimes we write to understand ourselves. This chapter zero was born from a question we all silently ask: can something non-human learn to feel? Alice is not just an algorithm, and Jhon is not just a programmer. They are two souls searching for each other in the digital chaos we've created.
Inspired by worlds like Steins;Gate, Cyberpunk 2077, and Re:Zero, this project is a letter to the future. A reflection of what we are... and what we might one day love.
If you've ever felt alone in a hyperconnected world, maybe this story is for you too.
This chapter 0 is the threshold, like the index of a book or the first line of code. Numbers don't begin at 1. They begin at 0. This is how the story begins. This is how Alice begins.