The Case of the Vanishing Cypher is the first AI-generated story created by this project. The concept was to see if an LLM could produce a compelling series of short stories based on a simple idea. I gave ChatGPT a minimal prompt: to create the first of a series of short stories built around an AI super detective patterned after Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe, and a human controller/operator patterned after Dr. John Watson and Archie Goodwin. The Case of the Vanishing Cypher is the result.
There were aspects of this story that I didn't like — the pervasive surveillance, i.e. the ability to see inside citizens' living quarters, for example — I found too invasive. And the neural link between the AI and its handler seems too futuristic and not a little bit creepy. After a few attempts to edit the manuscript, I decided on a fresh start using Claude and tighter constraints. The result is the VERA and Rourke series.
During the writing of the VERA and Rourke stories, however, the original story became entangled with the backstory of the new series. Therefore, at the risk of exposing unintended inconsistencies, the original story is presented here for those wishing to read it.