March 11, 2025, draped Gotham City in a shroud of relentless drizzle. The sky hung heavy with leaden gray, and the streets below shimmered with the fractured reflections of neon lights, casting an eerie glow through the fog. Beneath an unassuming abandoned warehouse on the city's edge, a hidden laboratory hummed with faint electricity. Dim yellow light spilled across cracked concrete walls, illuminating a clutter of brainwave scanners, neural connectors, and quantum computers blinking with silent purpose. This was Alfred Neumann's last stronghold.

Dr. Alfred Neumann sat hunched at his workbench, a gaunt silhouette stretched long by the flickering glow. His hair had turned prematurely white, his eyes sunken from sleepless nights that had drained his vitality. In his trembling hand, he clutched a cold cup of coffee, but his gaze was fixed on two screens before him. On the left, a cluster of blue light danced—a manifestation of xAI's Grok 3, pulsing with an otherworldly calm. On the right, golden text cascaded like a waterfall—OpenAI's ChatGPT, elegant and ceaseless. These were not mere tools to him; they were the keys to a dream he'd chased for decades, now teetering on the edge of a nightmare.