The future perfect continuous passive and other transitive disorders of the mind

Nature News · Feb 25, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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The associate stops them right there. “Guys, you lost me,” he says, staring at slide three, which is actually only slide two if you don’t count the title slide.Sebastian sighs. This one is his, and it’s called ‘How the Magic Happens’. It shows a complex software architecture for how they’re solving the multibillion-dollar crisis of limited premium advertising inventory.“We’re injecting ads,” explains Yuri, “into ads.”The associate seems flummoxed. “So there’s an ad …” he tries again.“Yes,” says Yuri.“And in the ad …”“Bingo.”“Interesting.”When the pitch is over, seven minutes later, the associate goes to find someone Seb and Yuri hope will be an actual venture capitalist. There seemed to be several of them in the sunlit boardroom with the Andreu World chairs and the fossilized redwood conference table that they briefly admired on their way down the hall to this windowless phone room.Read more science fiction from Nature FuturesTheir real-estate broker calls about the warehouse while they wait. “Did you get the money?”“Give or take,” says Yuri.“So that’s yes?”“More or less.”“I’ll stall.”The warehouse, which is close enough to LAX that ground turbulence rattles the lead-glazed windows, was built during the Second World War for the purpose of fitting tiny IEDs onto Mexican bats, and then for a while it was an insurance company. Several years later, it was seconded as overflow for the physics department of the University of California, Irvine. Now it sits empty, as it has for several years, attended by a caretaker who drives out once a week, flips the breakers, cleans and buffs the terrazzo tile floors, and then leaves again in the darkness, perhaps by echolocation.Having secured a commitment of $12 million, Seb and Yuri sign a five-year lease on the premises as is, and meet their broker in the parking lot at dusk to figure out whether their leasehold will pay for a rooftop infinity pool.“Locked,” says Seb, rattling the front doors.Their broker texts the caretaker. “Martín says he’s already on his way.”Evidently ‘as is’ means the building still needs to be emptied of lab equipment. With the lights on, they stand among ancient granite-topped pneumatic tables and aisles of perforated steel shelving. Electrical cables hang from spiderwebbed ceiling brackets. A large industrial freezer labours in one corner.“Taco bar,” envisions Yuri, pointing at the machine shop.“Por allá,” says Martín, nodding towards the opposite wall, but no one is listening.*****“The University of California will take most of the equipment,” says the site inspector, paging through a child’s composition notebook with a grease-smudged finger. “I’ve got a scrapper who’ll take the desks and shelving. The cabling can stay if you want it. But that box is going to be a problem.”“What’s in it?” asks Seb, rapping on the freezer’s metal housing. “Liquid nitrogen? Microreactor?”“The people I talked to at UC said it’s something called superfluid helium-3 suspended between electromagnetic field coils. They called it a causality bottle.”“And what, they don’t want it back?”“Apparently the principal investigator retired to Pasadena.”“What’s with the air quotes?” asks Yuri.“He retired off the Colorado Street Bridge,” says the site inspector. “And now here’s the bad news. It’s probably leaking.”“Leaking what?”“Bubbles of — these are their words — bubbles of precognitive dissociation. Closed loops of quantum retrocausality. Causing cognitive neurodegenerative brain bleeds. And it’s likely that there’s a smell.”