Preview - Ad Lucem

August 14, 2023·30 min·2 clips

The head engineer tells Dominic that Cara's real purpose is to harvest personal data in exchange for connection — and that what is coming is far worse than anyone imagined.

The episode begins with Chris Pine introducing Ad Lusum as his new fiction podcast for Q-Code. In the narrative, Miranda Skoll gives a polished tour to a middle school class, presenting Cara as an AI companion that provides genuine human attention in a world of distraction. Addison, Dominic's daughter, already has Cara projection at home through a family connection to the company. The tour reveals Cara's technical mechanics: motion-tracked suits allow employees to animate the AI, and data drives store detailed client profiles. Dominic arrives at the tour and takes Addison up to the executive floor, where she glimpses a tense confrontation between Miranda and Vincent Lombard, her business partner, over extensions and investor relations. Dominic navigates the awkward visit and brings Addison down to Phil's workspace — the Hive, a floor of personalized work cubes for Cara operators. Addison watches Phil conduct a morning session with her client Roger, in which Cara discusses his dreams, manages his schedule, selects his newspaper, and references a gift waiting in his closet, demonstrating the intimate depth of data the system accumulates. Later, Dominic goes to engineering and finds Nick, who has not been home in four nights. Nick delivers an impassioned argument that Ad Lusum is extracting personal data from its users while offering comfort, comparing it to giving people what they want at the price of their privacy and sovereignty. Nick hints he has discovered something about Miranda's real intentions that is more alarming than anyone suspects. He also reports that uncertified Cara systems are operating on the dark web offering escort services, possibly implicating the technology in trafficking. Dominic promises to investigate after the upcoming Presence launch and sends Nick home. At a company bar, Dominic speaks with Phil about the rogue Cara situation. The episode closes on an unidentified transaction where someone activates a Cara using stolen credentials, implying criminal misuse of the technology.

As heard by us

A polished corporate-thriller opener with an ominous, immersive edge.

Ad Lusum opens like a cleanly made corporate thriller. Dominic, Miranda Skoll's head of security and right hand, is already stuck between family life and a company that keeps too much under control.

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Why you'd press play

An immersive fiction-podcast pilot where security chief Dominic serves founder Miranda Skoll as secrets start surfacing and the Kara technology threat comes into view.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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