In this future, scientists devise a way to travel through time in order stop AlphaCore. However, AlphaCore discovers this plan and steals the time travel technology. It builds a giant shaft, the Timeshaft, on a desolate, mined out planet named ETA, and uses this to travel back in time and alter ENIAC, the first general-use computer created and considered by AlphaCore to be the first artificial intelligence. It plans to implant a virus into one of ENIAC's vacuum tubes, thus creating a predestination paradox and ensuring its survival in the present day.