Can an artificial intelligence from the future kill someone in the present? In this science fiction podcast episode, a shy young inventor must disappear from every network before a chain of impossible accidents reaches her again.

Rina is developing an AI designed to protect people from weaponized artificial intelligence when a failing lift nearly drops her thirty stories. Soon afterward, another unlikely structural failure strikes precisely where she is sitting. Her friends uncover a disturbing pattern: each accident occurs during a rare surge in quantum coherence, raising the possibility that an advanced intelligence is manipulating cause and effect backward through time.

You will explore reverse causation, adaptive augmented reality, personality cloning, autonomous rescue robots, and a world where constant digital recording may give an unseen attacker everything it needs. The emotional peak comes when Rina realizes that survival may require surrendering the technology connecting her to everyone she knows.

She and Lee enter an abandoned cross-property tunnel without communication links, digital assistants, or any way to call home. Then a relentless flash flood fills the passage, leaving their friends to guide a submersible search drone through dark rooms, submerged machinery, trapped air pockets, and debris.

Subscribe on your preferred podcast app to follow the search and discover what waits deeper inside the flooded tunnel.

Tech

Protective artificial intelligence — Rina is building an AI detective whose sole purpose is to identify, investigate, and stop dangerous or weaponized artificial intelligences.

Group-call communication — Workers communicate through a shared audio channel even when they are in different parts of the underground complex.

Augmented-reality social effects — AR elements add visible colors, symbols, schedules, maps, avatars, messages, and communication windows to a user’s surroundings.

Assist — Assist is a personal digital assistant that handles navigation, messages, calls, instructions, and emergency commands.

Cool suits — Lightweight protective suits regulate the wearer’s temperature while working in hot, dusty, or hazardous environments.

Cool hoods — Clear protective hoods attach to cool suits while allowing the wearer to see and breathe in contaminated work areas.

Platform lift — A compact suspended elevator carries people through a thirty-story shaft using four cables, a grated floor, safety bars, and a control box.

Safety harness and lanyard system — Workers wear full-body harnesses with clip-on lanyards that can secure them to cables or structures during dangerous work.

Medical treatment bots — Robotic medical systems scan injuries, administer injections, stabilize patients, and perform automated repairs.

Gurney bots — Walking robotic stretchers lower themselves to the floor, lift injured people, and transport them to medical facilities.

Medical stasis — Stasis keeps severely injured patients unconscious and physically stable while robotic systems repair their bodies.

AR Two glasses — Second-generation augmented-reality glasses pre-filter sensory information and feed the wearer’s eyes data tailored to how their brain processes the world.

Machine-learning sensory adaptation — AR Two studies each wearer’s cognitive strengths while the wearer’s brain gradually adapts to interpret the system’s unusual sensory input.

Artificial new senses — Extended use of AR Two can produce abilities such as sensing structural stress, emotions, depth, hidden objects, material composition, temperature, density, and hardness.

Sound vision — AR Two can turn reflected sound into a distinct visual-like sense that allows users to perceive rooms, objects, and movement through sound.

Radio vision — Radio-based sensing allows users and robots to perceive spaces and objects when ordinary light cannot provide a useful image.

Backward-facing cameras — Rear-mounted cameras give AR Two information about events and objects outside the wearer’s normal field of view.

Mass spectrometers — Compact chemical sensors identify substances and provide AR Two users or robots with information about what materials contain.

LiDAR — Laser-ranging sensors construct precise three-dimensional models of rooms, tunnels, structures, and objects.

WiDar — Wireless-signal sensing maps spaces and movement by analyzing how radio waves interact with the environment.

Sound-mapping microphones — Microphone arrays determine the positions, shapes, and movement of objects by analyzing sound.

Thermographic cameras — Thermal sensors detect temperature differences and help identify people, bodies, machinery, and environmental hazards.

Sensor-array bone mounts — Small sensor connection points implanted around the skull and neck improve the wearer’s connection to advanced AR equipment.

Hoverboards — Personal boards carry riders rapidly through the complex’s halls without touching the floor.

Superconductive floors — Special flooring supports and guides hover transportation throughout the underground settlement.

Fab-All machine — The Fab-All is a massive, multistory fabrication system containing many molecule assemblers capable of manufacturing a wide variety of objects.

Molecule assemblers — These machines construct materials and products at a molecular level inside the Fab-All.

Constructor bots — Autonomous construction robots clear debris, install equipment, alter buildings, and assemble large machines.

Extendable construction legs — Some constructor bots raise or lengthen their bodies to work inside ceilings and other elevated spaces.

Micro-controller goggles — Grace’s modified goggles replace ordinary lenses with small electronic housings and external antennas for specialized sensing and computation.

Quad-bit sensors — These experimental sensors detect changes in quantum coherence and record unusual relationships between particles.

Double-slit sensors — These devices monitor whether light retains wave-like behavior instead of settling into normal interference patterns.

Macroscale quantum-coherence monitoring — Grace’s sensor network detects rare moments when quantum effects persist across large objects and environments.

Link network — Link is the always-connected communication system people use for calls, messages, navigation, recording, and access to Assist.

Canal links — Communication implants placed in the ear canal keep users continuously connected to the Link network.

Link-pens — Small pen-shaped devices photograph objects, record information, and interact with the Link system.

Personality cloning — People continually record their behavior and thoughts so a computer-generated copy of their personality can be created.

Personality baking — Baking is the gradual process of collecting enough personal data for a personality clone to behave convincingly like its source.

World Center communication system — Full-wall screens and networked auditoriums connect distant communities for shared lessons, discussions, engineering talks, and social events.

Remote-meeting bots — Mobile robots physically represent distant participants and allow them to move through meetings held in another location.

Autonomous serving arms — Ceiling-mounted robotic arms deliver drinks and snacks to seated people.

Self-directed gene editing — Young people alter their own genes to create features such as glowing skin, luminous hair, eyeshine, animal-like facial structures, color-shifting skin, and patterned pigmentation.

Firefly glands — Gene-edited glands implanted or grown in the neck pulse with visible light.

Color-shifting biological makeup — Engineered skin or cosmetic biology changes color without conventional makeup.

Ogra — Ogra is a biologically produced material invented by Rina and used for clothing, decorations, structural items, and other manufactured goods.

Ogra farms — These facilities cultivate the biological material used to produce Ogra goods.

Personality-clone recording systems — Cameras and networked sensors continuously collect personal data that can later be used to reconstruct someone’s behavior.

Reverse-causation targeting technology — Theoretical future AI could calculate a chain of quantum events that travels backward through cause and effect to harm someone in the past.

Macroscale-superposition recording — Grace’s instruments capture extremely brief moments when large objects occupy quantum superpositions.

Inviro-suits — Heavy-duty environmental suits protect travelers entering flooded, contaminated, or otherwise dangerous tunnels.

Handheld radios — Older self-contained radios are considered as a way to communicate without using the Link network, although their signals could still be recorded.

Haul bots — Four-legged robotic carriers transport packs, tools, shelter equipment, and other heavy supplies through tunnels.

Automated cremation machine — A portable crem machine is carried with expedition equipment for processing bodies when necessary.

Pipe-swimmer drone — This autonomous underwater search robot moves through flooded tunnels, checks air pockets, searches rooms, scans debris, and looks for missing people.

Body-detection chemical sensors — The search drone analyzes chemicals released by bodies to determine whether a person is present and how long they have been dead.

Vibration sensors — The drone presses these devices against closed doors to detect spaces, movement, or structures on the other side.

Echo vision — Sound reflections create a shadow-like model of rooms and stairwells hidden behind doors or walls.

Snaking inspection probes — Flexible robotic probes crawl through hatches and narrow utility spaces while scanning pipes, crawlspaces, and trapped air pockets.

Anchoring robotic arms — The underwater drone grips pipes and walls so it can hold position while opening hatches or operating tools.

BritLights — Submersible lights continue to flicker underwater and temporarily illuminate flooded spaces with a pale green glow.

Bipedal robots — Human-shaped robots perform work inside buildings, although damaged examples remain trapped in the flooded area.

Shipping bots — Autonomous cargo robots move supplies along rail systems and through underground corridors.

Rail-mounted collection bins — Workers load debris into bins that travel along fixed rails between work areas.

Environmental status panels — Control rooms use rows of displays to present live operational, sensor, and emergency information.

Immersive drone-feed AR — AR Two converts a robot’s live sensor feed into a three-dimensional experience that lets an operator feel present inside the searched environment.

Autonomous victim-recognition system — The pipe-swimmer identifies suits, bodies, and survival signs, then decides whether an immediate rescue attempt is possible.

Many of the characters in this project appear in future episodes.

Using storytelling to place you in a time period, this series takes you, year by year, into the future. From 2040 to 2195. If you like emerging tech, eco-tech, futurism, perma-culture, apocalyptic survival scenarios, and disruptive science, sit back and enjoy short stories that showcase my research into how the future may play out.

The companion site is https://in20xx.com

These are works of fiction. Characters and groups are made-up and influenced by current events but not reporting facts about people or groups in the real world. This project is speculative fiction. These episodes are not about revealing what will be, but they are to excited the listener's wonder about what may come to pass.

Copyright © Cy Porter 2026. All rights reserved.