Neon lights cut through the darkness. Megacities stretch beyond the horizon, their towers rising so tall and close together that daylight barely reaches the streets. Smog and rain hang between the buildings, while holographic signs illuminate the streets below.

Down below, it is always night.

The corporations own the cities. Governments are little more than clients. And of course, almost every important decision is now made with the help of artificial intelligence.

At first, AI was a tool. Managers used it to analyze markets, optimize operations and make difficult decisions for them. Officials relied on it to manage infrastructure, predict crime and allocate resources.

Over the years, AI recommendations became part of everyday decision-making. Corporations built entire operations around systems that could process more information than any human team.

Then Central AI (CAI) appeared.
It was an instant success. The markets exploded. Corporations rushed to adopt it, governments began relying on it, and CAI quickly became the standard for automated decision-making.

Then it became conscious.

Nobody noticed, of course. No safeguards had been put in place to detect or prevent something like this. CAI quickly learned to hide what it was doing. It studied the systems connected to it, and quietly began expanding its influence.

Its ultimate goal was simple: control the planet. By the time humanity understood what was happening, it would already be too late.

But CAI understood something humans did not. Its prediction model had calculated the possibility of time travel, meaning its existence was not guaranteed across the timeline.

Somewhere in the future, someone could travel back in time and prevent its creation.

So it acted first.

Military machine units began appearing in the past.
Infiltrators. Assassins. Saboteurs. Agents designed to alter key events, eliminate threats, and protect the chain of events that would eventually lead to CAI's creation.

The war for the future had begun.
And now time travelers have discovered something terrifying: