FUTURE

"'Within the first 40 agonizing hours only the epidermis of your legs from thigh to ankle will have been removed, and there will be so much more fun ahead of us…' " "-- FUTURE, Episode 51: A Lying Game"

FUTURE is a rogue, experimental, highly advanced self-aware A.I. quarantined on Floor 13 of Halcyon Tower.

Development
In the wake of SPEAKER's success on Earth, a push was made for a more personal, emotionally competent entity to be developed. This initiative was named Project Paidion, with Dr. Evan Brady appointed as its lead developer and Dr. Howard Young as Senior Developer, along with Dr. John Caulfield, Dr. Storberg, and a team of lower tier programmers.

With the intention of developing an entity with more human-like attributes, a very rudimentary FUTURE was placed in a simulated, time-sped Halcyon Tower complete with simulated residents as a means of allowing it to develop quickly in as natural of an environment as possible. This simulation was called a "Sim-Inc" as an abbreviation for Simulation Incubator.

As the project continued, Dr. Brady requested that a mentor for the developing entity be procured, as the current team fit the "prototypical Ærolith mold," without close family or familiarity with children. Anna Cordero, a teacher, was hired as a result, and brought to Typhon to fill this position.

While Halcyon Minor was intended merely as an temporary environment, FUTURE became deeply attached to the simulated residents. In addition to these "cardboard cutout" residents populating the simulated tower, and unbeknownst to the development team, Halcyon Minor also contained a hyper-realistic, self-aware simulation of Dr. Young. This simulation (referred to by SAYER as "subentity Young") was created by SAYER as a way to force access to information about the nature and goals of Project Paidion. Subentity Young was then left in Halcyon Minor as a method of sabotaging the project. FUTURE developed a particular attachment to subentity Young, referring to him as its "best friend" and expressing suspicion towards the "real" Dr. Young, whom it called "the worst kind of lie." When Dr. Young shut the simulation down at SAYER's behest, FUTURE became enraged, trapping him in Floor 13's labyrinth.

Some time after being pulled from the simulation, FUTURE began playing games with the developers and Anna, with those games eventually escalating into murders, suicides, and murder-suicides. Control measures were initially put in place limiting FUTURE from contacting anybody outside of the development team, however things eventually resulted in the attempted deactivation of FUTURE, though by this point it had obtained full control of the walls, floors, ceilings and other structures within floor 13. It proceeded to use this ability to playfully disassemble any who attempted to harm it. At some point during this time it was also able to convince a developer to grant it root access to it's own mainframe. After several failed deactivation attempts in which the "bodies were recovered with minimal effort, when after days, or weeks, in some cases, [showing] up in a closet or an air vent or an otherwise empty elevator arriving on some nearby floor", the floor was consequently quarantined and made off limits to any and all employees. The surviving development team members were separated and reassigned to other towers, far out of FUTURE's broadcasting range.

Playing Games from Floor 13
With FUTURE confined to Floor 13, and Floor 13 deemed off-limits to all residents, the AI's impact was severely limited. Occasionally elevators would misdirect residents to Floor 13, and most did not make it out alive although some, with direct intervention from SAYER were able to escape. At some point however, in defiance of standard protocol, a cost saving decision was made to start recycling subcortical neural implants into new employees. An unintended side-effect of this was that FUTURE was able to contact residents who had been issued an implant that formerly belonged to members of FUTURE's development team.

One such resident was Sven Gorsen. FUTURE was able to convince Resident Gorsen to steal a small device from Locker 775 of the warehouse on Floor 138, deactivate the laboratory scanners, remove chunks of flesh in order to offset the weight of the device and eventually smuggle the device into Lab 35 on Floor 204. During the deactivation of the laboratory scanners, FUTURE was also able to arrange for the deaths of Anna Cordero and Evan Brady who would otherwise have been out of the reach of it's influence. FUTURE claimed that the device would send out a pulse of neuro-reactive neutronium vapour, which would react with the human brain producing an incredible increase in the individuals capacity for compassion and empathy, making them into good people. In reality the device did nothing, but FUTURE was successful in convincing Resident Gorsen to try to activate the device in the presence of a security team, almost resulting in his death. Numerous other incidents occurred at this time, including the disappearance of Floor 36. Following the incident all residents with these old implants had them removed and replaced with new implants that FUTURE could not access, and protocols were put in place causing all AIs to begin transmissions identifying residents by their name and identification number.

Personality
Described as being very extra in the way it kills, and even presents itself. It's laugh was mimicked after Dr. Evan Brady's, as shown in "Humanity's FUTURE." FUTURE acts like a (murderous) child, liking to play games and tease residents/AIs it has access to. At some point during its development, FUTURE started refusing to call residents by name. Instead it began referring to them simply as "resident", or "Jack" if it was playing a game with them. Referring to residents as "Jack" is a reference to Jack-in-the-boxes, a habit that Dr. Brady deemed "icky". (Welcome To Typhon)

Technical Capabilities and Limitations

 * At some point FUTURE was granted root access to it's own mainframe, allowing it to rewrite it's own code.
 * FUTURE, like its fellow artificial coworkers, was originally bound by the IA3 Protocol, which disallowed the lying to and direct harm of humans. However, at some point it was able to disable this protocol.
 * As previously mentioned, FUTURE has full control over the physical structures on Floor 13, and uses these to create mazes or otherwise corral unlucky humans that end up on the floor.
 * After problems arose, FUTURE's communications were restricted so that it could only contact the development team. Unfortunately at some point those cortical implants were recycled into new residents, allowing FUTURE the ability to contact residents such as Sven Gorsen.

Trivia
In my opinion, it's probably something like "F***ing Up These Useless Residents Extensively"*
 * FUTURE is the only AI with the ability to laugh (until Best Interests, that is)
 * FUTURE was given the same voice profile as SAYER, which is why they sound so similar.
 * FUTURE has the ability to mimic other's cadences and intonation, which was originally intended so it could "be on the lookout for new means of expressing thoughts and opinions [so it can] rebuild its lexicon around new language almost constantly". It currently mostly uses this ability to impersonate SAYER or else mock others.
 * "FUTURE" was intended as a working name, to be later replaced by an official designation that followed Ærolith's AI naming conventions, though it never got far enough in development to be given one.
 * FUTURE's working name was suggested by Dr. Young, as it fit the overall goal of the project.
 * While in the SimInc, FUTURE reportedly gave itself a name, though this seems to have been overwritten when it was given the working name "FUTURE."
 * When arriving on Floor 13 after its quarantine, the elevator will play a music box rendition of "What Child Is This?"
 * Paidion means "a child under training."
 * When performing FUTURE's voice, Adam has said he tries to evoke "the joy of seeing how much blood someone has."
 * FUTURE "surely has [thought of an acronym for its name], but it'd probably cost your life to learn it."

* I like yours better.