With the blurring of magic and science, there has been an increase over the years in more dangerous items being created. It will be exciting, or terrifying, to see what the mixture of the two will create and it is the job of the ADI’s Future Initiative to look at the future of human technology and the creation of new magical items.

Here are some of the theoretical ideas that have been formed within the Initiative.

Real Virtual Reality, the idea behind this is pretty apparent. The technology of VR with headset and controller would end up as an actual reality device that would send you to another world from which you might not return.

Another idea for a horrible way to die within the machine, is that you wouldn't be able to remove the devices and would become trapped within whatever world they had selected and eventually die of starvation.

Yet another idea is where there is one player that goes into a game and is used to kill all the "npc's (Charaters within video games)" in the surrounding area and when they come out of the game discover the npc’s were real people around them.

Of course, not all magical items are harmful. It could be the same image on a VR set that could rid you of all your fears, and stress and leave you in a utopian reality that makes you calm and happy no matter what's going on around you.

Then there is the possibility of creating an experimentation room where you could study the effects on a human down to the molecular level. A place where science has no need for ethics to get in the way.

How about we change to a much better topic which involves cars and the automotive industry. An industry that is rapidly deploying electric and fully automated vehicles that can drive themselves and charge with sunlight. What could ever possibly go wrong with them? Well to the imaginative and experienced beings at the ADI a lot!

The human ideas for full automatism are that the world will become safer since they can think, calibrate and move quicker than their human counterparts, but who doesn't.

The one asset that gives humanity the edge over machines is when it comes down to feelings and instincts.

A human with all their weaknessess and common breeding abilities, do have the uncanny ability to feel when something is about to go wrong, or is supernatural.

This is why the ADI is being a bit more thorough with regards to the more common manual car. We in the shadowed world have got used to them over the years and have even found a place for them in our world, such as ghost cabs.

However, there are a few situations where the lack of human interaction may come with side effects. Perhaps as these ghost cars are moving they may cause havoc with the automatic cars around it as it moves in an unusual way causing them to crash.

An even worse idea is that there is a virus version for automated vehicles. The virus would use the communication through each vehicle that is aimed to help and improve the flow and safety of the cars, into corrupting them and cause crashes through the entire system.

The idea also arises that these cars are already auto-driving and this possibility means that the magical car does not need to use as much energy in the production of the same abilities as the older, manual, cars needed. Instead this gives them a personality or some type of magical ability like phasing through walls, spreading plagues, curses or water magic.

Another automatic machine is the auto doctor which is being developed to use technology to perform surgeries on people. The medical device is used as it is far more accurate, will stop, and doens’t suffer from fatigue that affects humans, and so prevents any such random twitch that could do a lot of damage. As the system’s a self-contained unit, that can be thoroughly disinfected and without anyone else entering the room with the surgeons outside they no longer need to use as many resources, so the idea is an excellent advancement for humanity.

Now imagine that unit, or some other advanced medical and life-saving technology going rogue as it gets magically turned. Well we have, coming up with some monstrosities just like one of these Magical Auto Doc’s could do. Imagine walking into one of these things which then proceeds to rip off one of your arms and attaches it to your leg, or puts it on back to front. Or it could disassemble you to your base parts before rebuilding you from the ground up adding fur, maybe a few canines excetera and hay presto you’re a dog. And as you walk out it will tell you to have a, “healthy life”.

If the worst comes to pass, much like other items have throughout history the technology will try to take over the world. We can see a hive mind that forms from an A.I and depending on how the Artifact evolves it could very well look at humanity, or the darklings, as a black stain on the world. Then imagine that artefact having the ability to create its own soldiers and if it has any intelligence it will hide them in plain sight. By using those that use the health service as they walk into its reconvergence chamber, to build an army with your body.

I would like to remind everyone that these are merely used as theories for the benefit of the ADI so that they may gain a better understanding of the possibilities to help protect us when these artefacts may form, through accident, or malice.

Byline Starfury