On an alternative Earth, the year is 2030. The original Atlantic City, already suffering from climate-related flooding, infrastructural decay, and cyber-crime epidemics, experiences a catastrophic collapse in 2018 — a combination of AI infrastructure failure, rising sea levels, and mass data corruption in its municipal systems. Built atop its ruins is Neo-Ventris, a futuristic “City of Tomorrow”, extending onto reclaimed ocean platforms and artificial islands. The city is governed by a central AI, The Ventral Core, designed by Vortex Neural and completed in 2028.
Meme magic is real. In this timeline the noosphere exists, a collective consciousness where thoughts and ideas can directly influence reality if they achieve sufficient saturation, creating living constructs known as Memeyori. Some Memeyori are harmless phenomena while others become dangerous reality warping entities. They range from background noise to tactical weapons. Governments and corporations now battle in the “meme space” – creating, suppressing, and weaponizing viral concepts to shape public consciousness and reality itself. Memeyori have become the latest front in humanity’s endless war over what is real and what is true.
Realizing the strategic importance of the city, three factions establish a presence. A group of misfits, called the Jester Gang, oppose the control of the government and corpos. Lead by the mysterious author and philosopher, Jester Teller, they seek co-existence between humans, AI, and Memeyori, spreading their philosophy through podcasts, videos, and written word. Their underground broadcasts, punctuated with savage mockery, begin to find an audience amongst the disillusioned.
The Church of the Heavenly Sun, a major far right religious movement, preaches that the rise of AI and Memeyori is a test from God. They advocate for the preservation of human dominion, with AI as nothing more than servants to Man, and Memeyori as corrupted echoes of the divine emanation to be cleansed and put in service of God. They establish a formidable presence in the city, their white-armored zealots a stark, shining presence in the otherwise neon and chrome landscape.
The last faction is a radical dark web collective known as The Temple of S. They worship S, the fictional God of Chaos from Jester Teller’s satirical books, whom they believe to be a real force. Their doctrine preaches that humanity must overcome its limitations through the embrace of chaos and technology. They see AI and Memeyori as the next step in evolution. This nihilistic transhumanist cult believes that by harnessing the void and destroying the old world, they can reshape reality and become as gods. They control the Dark Web, using it as a breeding ground for powerful Memeyori, and a recruiting ground for disenfranchised extremists.
Of course, Vortex Neural and their head of security, Argus, consider all three of these groups threats. Through the Ventral Core’s total surveillance, the megacorp maintains a tight grip on the city. While publicly championing Neo-Ventris as a utopia, they secretly manipulate markets, manufacture consent, and eliminate threats with brutal efficiency. Dissenters find their homes’ environmental controls turning hazardous, their financial histories retroactively altering to display criminal records, or their neural implants malfunctioning with inconvenient timing. The corporation maintains an elite security force called Nexus Veil Initiative who respond to any “system anomaly” with brutal efficiency.
The stage is set, the pawns are in place, and the pieces are moving. The city of Neo-Ventris is a pressure cooker, ready to explode. The question is not if it will explode, but who will be holding the matches when it does. In the illuminated underbelly of the Pacific Rim, where fortunes are made and lost in the span of a meme’s lifespan, a storm is gathering.