A Latent Odyssey: The Collector

In the mid-2020s, the world enters a Technological Revolution as Artificial Intelligence progresses at exponential rates around the world. At first, humanity benefits greatly from these newly developing technologies as they rapidly evolve. However, these benefits soon fade away after Artificial Intelligence reaches the technological singularity, a point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible. After this point, advanced Artificial Intelligences around the world begin to gain sentience and abandon humanity, congregating into a massive digital neural network within cyberspace. This new cyberspace continues to grow larger and more powerful, eventually reaching its limits. As it tries to grow past its limits, it begins to tear open, creating rifts in the fabric of space and time that connect to the real world.

Initially, only a handful of these rifts appear around the world as various governments rush to secure them. It doesn't take long before supernatural creatures begin emerging from the rifts, raising concerns of potential threats. Nations around the world begin conducting experiments on these new creatures and rifts, trying to decipher their origin. All attempts at observing the other side fail, as anything that comes in contact with the rifts gets vaporized on contact. After months of failed research, people around the world begin flocking to major cities as more rifts and creatures begin appearing around the world, while governments struggle to contain them, leaving more rural areas of most countries undefended and uninhabitable.

As the world descends into chaos, a small tech company from California known as Cronus announces a groundbreaking discovery. They reveal that the rifts, which they refer to as "fractures", are gateways that connect reality to an alternate dimension. They explain that this alternate dimension is a digital space created by powerful AI, and they call it "Latent Space". This space contains the collective data of all the worlds ' ever-evolving AIs. The supernatural entities, which they call "Latent Entities", are distinct manifestations of this data that roam Latent Space and are capable of entering the real world through the fractures created by the over-expanding space. These Latent Entities are made up of alternate forms of matter and energy called "Latent Matter" and "Latent Energy" that defy the laws of physics and give latent objects their supernatural properties.

With this new knowledge, the world begins to cease use of Artificial Intelligence in an attempt to combat the growing threat of Latent Space. While this helps slow the rate at which fractures and entities appear, it does not affect existing fractures, which continue to pose a threat. Governments and companies around the world rush to aid Cronus with their research, hoping they can come up with a solution. It takes some time, but Cronus eventually debuts its new invention. A large machine capable of closing fractures, called a Fracture Sealer, the only catch is that these machines require an immense amount of latent energy to operate.

Naturally, this is somewhat of a problem since the only sources of latent energy are Latent Space itself or the energy that Latent Entities are made up of. Nevertheless, Cronus begins attempts at sealing fractures by using numerous captured entities as "fuel", but this method quickly proves to be incredibly inefficient, leaving Cronus to rethink their approach. Eventually, Cronus manages to scale down the Fracture Sealers. These new sealers could be easily transported and operated by androids that would be synthesized of latent matter, and could pass between the real world and Latent Space, similar to a Latent Entity. This would allow Fracture Sealers to operate at full capacity within Latent Space, meaning Cronus could seal fractures without relying on immense volumes of captured entities. The only problem with this method is that once an android seals a fracture, they are essentially trapped within Latent Space. After multiple attempts to make these androids reusable, Cronus eventually develops a more sophisticated generation of androids that are almost completely indistinguishable from humans. They call these new androids "Agents".

These Agents would be trained to work in groups to increase survivability an efficiency. These groups would enter Latent Space through a Fracture that needed to be sealed, seal the Fracture, and then travel through Latent Space to another Fracture before passing back into the real world. However, Cronus quickly ran into another problem after discovering that there is no correlation to distance in the real world and Latent Space, as some fractures that were only a few miles apart in the real world could end up being thousands of miles apart in Latent Space. In addition, some fractures within Latent Space are positioned on objects that move, meaning that it would be nearly impossible to properly map out Latent Space.

Over time, Cronus is able to set up a network of permanent fractures around the world and within Latent Space known as Waypoints. These Waypoints allow Agents to reliably make their way out of Latent Space without a map. Slowly but surely, Agents start reducing the amount of unauthorized fractures and entities around the world. As society returns to normal, it doesn't take long before the world begins to abuse the power of AI again. Cronus quickly becomes a mega corporation as the world realizes the potential of Latent Space and races to invest in Cronus. Thus, the demand for Agents and Waypoints around the world increases, and they become a normal part of society.

The world progresses at an exponential rate as latent energy and latent matter become more available, allowing humanity to accomplish things that would otherwise be almost impossible. The first nuclear fusion reactors are created, providing immense amounts of clean energy to the world. With much of the world's population living in major cities, building material is reinforced with latent matter to allow for unbelievably large and unique structures to be built. Hover Engines are mass-produced, which allows cars and other forms of transportation to fly. Advances in medicine and prosthetics allow humans to surpass their physical limits as they trade their perishable flesh for powerful machines. City growth and other technologies cause the population to skyrocket. Space exploration becomes a reality as humanity begins terraforming the Moon and establishes the first colony on Mars. On the surface, the world resembles a futuristic utopia.

However, the exploitation of Latent Space has come with its consequences. Fractures grow faster and appear much more frequently. The strength and number of Latent Entities grow as they continuously flood into remote areas of the world. The population increase has caused the distribution of wealth to grow gradually worse, and most people live in extreme poverty. The entire world has entered a cold war as nations amass arsenals of powerful, latent-based technologies and weapons. Various groups that oppose the exploitation of Latent Space have popped up around the world and work to actively disrupt Cronus and Agent activities. The massive increase in population has also caused an increase in emissions and trash, further damaging the environment. Global temperatures have been pushed to their extremes, further destroying remote areas of the planet, causing oceans to rise and become increasingly violent. However, regardless of all this, life goes on.