Neurocracy

the door to the mind is open

NEUROCRACY is an animated sci-fi television series based on the videogame of the same name. It depicts a near-future society where networked brain implants known as colloids are as commonplace as smartphones, and equally abused for mass surveillance. In this neurometric panopticon, your thoughts can betray you.

NEUROCRACY features a non-linear storyline that jumps between two interlocking timelines: one depicts the discovery of a fatal disease in the year 2039, the other opens ten years later with a high-profile assassination. Both timelines progress towards unlocking the mystery of Adira, rumoured to be an elusive hacker who can manipulate people’s actions and memories through their colloids.

NEUROCRACY blends the speculative fiction of Black Mirror with the visual boldness of Arcane. It can be produced on a comparatively modest budget with a fully remote team of contributors, including Sally Beaumont, Xavier Coelho-Kostolny, and Joannes Truyens.

ADAPTATIONPermalink

NEUROCRACY is adapted from an award-winning, critically acclaimed videogame that invites players to explore the Wikipedia of the year 2049 and solve a murder across ten weekly episodes.

The game was praised for its original sci-fi setting and experimental interactive format, which came together across three seasons that cultivated a passionate community eager to debate theories.

Ambitious, confident writing – excellent science fiction

The Guardian

A brilliant futurist mystery of truth and technology

Eurogamer

Future fiction that feels like a perfect projection of our bizarre present

Vice

A tale that explores many pressing contemporary issues

NME

A multifaceted mystery that cries out for a conspiracy board

The Verge

VISUAL STYLEPermalink

To visually communicate its fully networked future, NEUROCRACY uses digital animation with a stylised, lo-fi aesthetic that embraces the look of 3D wireframes.

It’s a layer of abstraction that provides a space for the audience to fill, fostering a sense of being pulled into the story through leveraging the power of imagination.

It ensures that form and content reinforce each other in a timeless way, rendering void the increasingly fraught question of what’s real in live action photography.

CHARACTERSPermalink

MAIN CASTPermalink

NEUROCRACY has a cast of four main characters, two for each timeline but with crossovers showing them at different ages. They all gain personal connections to each other, and to the mystery of Adira’s true nature.

The 2039 timeline tells the story of Sunil Cariappa and Connie Muren, two scientists who discover an insidious disease. Their efforts to stop it are reflected by their different expertises and the close bond they come to share.

The 2049 timeline is shown through the perspectives of Li Lian and Spencer Hagen as protagonist and antagonist. Though they never meet, their fates become linked even before the first opening titles roll.

Li LianPermalink

A subject of the gig economy, Li Lian works as a service contractor to process calls from people who want to report technical complaints about their brain implants. She’s not allowed to complain about her own mandatory work implant, which is continuously monitored by her AI supervisor.

Lian is the unwitting protagonist, thrown by happenstance into a far-reaching conspiracy that leaves her in possession of an incendiary secret and a mission to deliver it against overwhelming odds. Things go from bad to worse when her anti-anxiety implant stops working, but that also ends up saving her life. Her ultimate goal is to reach someone on the run, someone under even greater threat:

Sunil CariappaPermalink

As a foremost epidemiologist, Sunil Cariappa has studied the different ways in which pandemics disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in society. The irony is not lost on him when he discovers a fatal disease spreading through farmed tuna that only the wealthy can afford to eat.

Sunil is one of the kindest people you could ever meet, which is why it will break your heart to learn how he comes to blame himself for the dystopian state of the year 2049. He has retired from public life then, but everything changes when he receives a mysterious message from someone long thought dead, someone holding the key to a secret he doesn’t even remember having:

Connie MurenPermalink

After her name becomes synonymous with a new pandemic, neuroscientist Connie Muren is turned into the public face of the global effort to stop it from spreading. When she learns that the cure is worse than the disease, she is forced to disappear in order to save the life of her closest friend.

Connie represents the strongest link between the two timelines, with her actions causing what happens in 2049 and in the years leading up to it. The 2039 timeline builds her close bond with Sunil before pulling them apart, which leads into the 2049 timeline showing their efforts to a possible reunion. But there is someone who will stop at nothing to prevent that reunion from happening, someone desperate to get inside Connie’s head:

Spencer HagenPermalink

What if all tech billionaires were actually one person? Meet Spencer Hagen, chief technology officer of the most powerful corporation in the world of 2049. He owes his success to a line of brain implants that dominate the neurotech market, even as a hidden design flaw grows to consume his thoughts.

Spencer’s storyline is that of the suspect who has to hunt himself, forced to aid in the investigation of a murder that he committed. You almost want to root for him every time he narrowly evades capture, but the more you learn about Spencer, the harder you ache for his undoing. When that moment of reckoning finally arrives, it turns to ashes in your mouth for coming at the hands of ▒▒▒▒▒▒.

SUPPORTING CASTPermalink

EPISODESPermalink

Season 01 of NEUROCRACY comprises 10 episodes, each with a running time of 30 to 40 minutes. The first episode is set in 2049, the second one opens in 2039, with the two timelines continuing to alternate between episodes.

Each timeline tells a self-contained story across five episodes, which can be rearranged in different viewing orders. This changes how the identity of Adira and other mysteries are uncovered, encouraging multiple rewatches.

Below is a table with brief episode synopses of NEUROCRACY’s original run, followed by a more detailed breakdown of the plot and a summary of three additional viewing orders.

	Episode	Synopsis
1	Phantom Pain	2049. The assassination of the world’s richest man forces an innocent gig worker on the run as the real culprit tries to shift the blame.
2	Index Case	2039. When two scientists discover a fatal neurodegenerative disease, their life-saving efforts are thwarted by those responsible for spreading it.
3	Memory Hole	2049. While Lian evades the authorities, Spencer uses his control over colloids to push the investigation towards the evidence he planted.
4	Outbreak Control	2039. Sunil and Connie grow closer as they continue their work outside of official channels, leading to a breakthrough. Shaoyong suffers a betrayal.
5	Altered States	2049. Cleared of suspicion, Spencer launches a bid for Zhupao’s throne. An unexpected arrival brings Efua and Lian closer to uncovering Adira.
6	Elite Panic	2039. The pandemic declaration complicates Sunil’s attempts to avert a mass panic. A personal tragedy leads Connie to an unsettling discovery.
7	Intrusive Thoughts	2049. With Sunil’s fate uncertain, Efua warns Connie that time is running out for her plan regarding Adira. Spencer gets what he always wanted.
8	Contact Tracing	2040. After silencing the truth about Adira, Spencer sets his sights on Sunil as the key to winning Zhupao’s struggle against the government.
9	Nerve Ending	2049. Lian is determined to find Sunil, unaware of the danger stalking them both. Backed into a corner, Spencer resorts to extreme measures.
10	Network Effects	2040. Shaoyong receives a warning about what the future holds for him. With the help of Efua, Sunil figures out what happened to Connie.

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S01E01: Phantom PainPermalink

►► THE YEAR IS 2049

In Beijing, on the day of China’s grand centenary celebration, tech oligarch Yuri Golitsyn uses a baffle to covertly board the helicopter of Xu Shaoyong, founder of Zhupao. Yuri called the secret meeting to reveal the true nature of Adira, which leaves Shaoyong in agony. Claiming that anyone who has a colloid is at risk from Adira, Yuri gives Shaoyong a collocidal and ominously stresses that he must use it before he falls asleep or everything will be lost.

Due to a keyword search for Adira running in G6, a mass surveillance network owned and operated by Zhupao, the meeting is discovered by Spencer Hagen, the company’s CTO. He panics, uses G6 to access China’s military drone fleet, and overrides one of the airport security drones. After struggling with a request for human authorisation of the launch, Spencer shoots down Shaoyong’s helicopter with a missile strike, killing all aboard.

►► OPENING TITLES

Li Lian, an India-based contractor working for Zhupao, is arrested in Chennai when her G6 terminal is linked to Spencer‘s drone override. Lian is detained at the Chinese embassy and remotely questioned from Beijing by military officer Wei Kaileng, who accuses her of being Adira. The interrogation reveals Adira to be the name of an elusive hacker who can penetrate G6 and use people’s colloids to control their actions and memories.

Spencer is moved to a secure floor alongside Zhupao’s senior leadership, most of whom consider Yuri to be responsible for the attack on Shaoyong due to a rivalry between the two. Arriving at Zhupao headquarters as lead investigator, Kaileng reveals that Yuri’s body was identified in the wreckage and asks Zhupao for technical support in rooting out Adira, whom Chinese President Chen Baoqiang has publicly blamed for the attack.

Lian is released from the Chinese embassy by Jarrod Sim, a representative of Indian Prime Minister Jagrati Thass. Jarrod explains that Baoqiang called for Lian‘s extradition to China because of her link to Adira, but Jagrati has negotiated a day’s reprieve on the condition that Lian is taken to a secured residence. On the way there, Lian begs Jarrod to get her a collocidal so she can evade G6 surveillance and disappear, which leaves Jarrod conflicted.

Spencer resumes his duties as CTO to aid Kaileng in the investigation. Surprised that his drone override was routed for human authorisation through Lian’s work terminal, Spencer threatens G6 chief engineer Tsang Yun into framing Sunil Cariappa for the attack. When Yun refuses, Spencer asserts himself as Adira and claims the alternative is brainjacking him to force his hand and make him forget everything, describing the process as agonising.

With Jarrod unable to secure a collocidal and Jagrati making no headway in halting her extradition, Lian confides that she fears going back to China because she settled in India to escape an abusive family. During the night, a delivery drone drops off a package containing a baffle and a collocidal. Jarrod denies having sent it, warning Lian that the collocidal will disable all of her colloids, including the one she relies on to relieve her anxiety.

After hacking the flight log of the delivery drone, Jarrod learns that it was launched from a rental house in Dharwad, a city that isn’t part of G6. They suggest that Jagrati is offering Lian an escape while keeping deniability towards China, but Lian is consumed by an uncanny conviction that the package was sent by Adira. Determined to find the truth in Dharwad, Lian applies the collocidal and uses the baffle to slip out of the residence.

Kaileng openly suspects Spencer of being Adira after deeming Lian to be innocent and refuting Yun’s planted evidence that Sunil was responsible for the attack. In response, Spencer begins the process of brainjacking Kaileng.

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S01E02: Index CasePermalink

►► THE YEAR IS 2039

In Toronto, Sunil is worried about his cat showing behavioural changes and progressive immobility. After diagnosing a neurodegenerative condition, the vet mentions that similar cases have been reported in recent months. When his cat passes away, Sunil starts an investigation as part of his epidemiological work at the Public Health Agency of Canada, finding that all cases are the result of food poisoning from eating Lassgard tuna.

►► OPENING TITLES

Neuroscientist Connie Muren arrives in Beijing to investigate the medical case of Deng Yixing, a Chinese celebrity streamer who is dying from a disease that causes specific proteins to misfold into infectious prions. When Connie asks if a colloid can be administered for a more precise diagnosis, she’s told that colloids are strictly regulated in China and only available as part of a Zhupao clinical trial being run in Canada.

Will Lassgard is visiting Canada to take part in the Zhupao trial. After getting a colloid implanted and calibrated, he finds it to be remarkably successful at treating the chronic pain from his spine disorder, though he also reports increased fatigue. When he returns to Sweden and learns that Yixing has died, Will deletes the record of a livestream during which Yixing consumed large amounts of Lassgard tuna as part of a promotional deal.

Connie returns home to Düsseldorf and publishes a paper on Yixing’s case as a novel prion disease in humans, leading Sunil to reach out and start a video correspondence with her. He proposes that Yixing‘s condition and the recent string of cat mortalities are the result of prions spreading through tuna farmed by Lassgard Bioteknik, a Swedish aquaculture company led by Will that supplies the world’s remaining tuna stock.

With the help of Yixing’s father, Zhupao senior executive Deng Bowen, Connie acquires samples of preprocessed Lassgard tuna and discovers they are infected with neurodegenerative prions that can jump to humans. Sunil suspects that the prion disease is mainly infecting the wealthy, citing Lassgard tuna’s popular status as a high-priced delicacy and recent examples of erratic behaviour from billionaires and celebrities.

When Will is alerted to Bowen’s purchase of Lassgard tuna for Connie’s investigation, he reaches out to Shaoyong with the intent of reviving a partnership between Zhupao and Lassgard Bioteknik for the construction of aquaculture facilities off the coast of China. Will had previously agreed to the partnership before backing out unexpectedly, which led to an angry rift with Shaoyong that he now hopes to mend.

Sunil and Connie agree to report their discovery to the World Health Organization (WHO). Despite Connie’s objections, WHO officials reach out to Lassgard Bioteknik concerning the novel prion disease, which prompts Will to launch a disinformation campaign. This includes pressuring the WHO to bury the report on Lassgard tuna and making Sunil and Connie the target of harassment after they independently publish their findings.

As Will reconnects with Shaoyong, he learns that Zhupao’s development of colloids is stalled because Shaoyong’s party membership was revoked by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who feels threatened by Shaoyong‘s rising popularity. Shaoyong hopes that the partnership with Lassgard Bioteknik will smooth things over with Jinping, referring to their shared love of the Chairman’s Platter, a popular sushi dish made with Lassgard tuna.

Shaoyong offers to celebrate the renewed partnership with Will by treating him to the Chairman’s Platter. As Will feigns a stomach issue and refuses, Shaoyong introduces him to Spencer, seen eating from the platter.

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S01E03: Memory HolePermalink

►► THE YEAR IS 2049

Baoqiang takes steps to assert control over Zhupao in the wake of the drone attack on Shaoyong, including a trading stop that sends its market value plummeting. Chen Lei, the company’s CEO and next in line for the throne, warns Spencer that Kaileng has a simultaneous mission to gain intelligence and sabotage Zhupao from the inside. When he is alone, Spencer is rattled by the voice of Connie calling his name.

►► OPENING TITLES

Lian wakes up aboard a Dharwad-bound shuttle bus, a cheap thing that doesn’t require a colloid for payment. A fellow passenger recognises Lian from a bulletin about her disappearance, but decides not to report her. As they pick up a conversation, the passenger mentions to Lian that Jagrati won the recent Indian elections on the promise of taking her country out of G6, and that Yuri was planning a similar campaign in Russia.

Kaileng deduces from the drone authorisation request that Spencer has no colloid. When confronted, Spencer feigns a genetic quirk that prevents his brain from accepting them. Concerned that Kaileng has gotten no rest since the start of the investigation, Spencer overworks his colloid to induce fatigue, revealing to Yun that brainjacking is a neural reconditioning process that only takes effect during sleep.

When her bus is stopped at a police cordon outside Dharwad, Lian learns that the officers are detaining anyone trying to leave G6 without a colloid and subjecting them to a forced implant. Making use of her baffle to hide, Lian narrowly avoids a suspicious police officer who is puzzled by strange distortions cracking in the air. Lian manages to slip away and continues to look for another way past the cordon into Dharwad.

Spencer wonders about the absence of Roshan De Silva, whose mere mention causes Lei to react like he’s being brainjacked on the spot. After clashing with Lei over their future roles in the company, Spencer is relieved to find that Kaileng has fallen asleep at his desk. He rushes to Yun and forces him to fabricate additional evidence to indicate that Sunil had an accomplice in orchestrating the attack on Shaoyong’s helicopter.

Lian finds that the only way into Dharwad is through a solar park patrolled by quadruped drones. She uses her baffle to pass through unseen, but one of the drones detects a disturbance and follows it, trapping a corner of the baffle under its leg. As the battery threatens to run out, the drone ends up playfully interacting with the distortions produced by the baffle, resuming its patrol just as Lian turns visible. She safely makes it into Dharwad.

Right before Kaileng means to incriminate him, Spencer publicly announces that Yun‘s internal investigation has credibly linked the murder of Shaoyong and the identity of Adira to the joint actions of Sunil and Efua Amankwah, an AI researcher who previously contributed to the development of colloids and their integration into G6. Kaileng tries to reject the announcement as a clear fabrication, but his colloid won’t let him accept anything else as the truth.

Lian discovers Efua in the rental house where the delivery drone originated. Efua denies being Adira and tries to send Lian away, claiming that anyone who recognised her could have tipped off G6 to their location. When Lian protests, Efua reveals that Zhupao is brainjacking anyone with a colloid to dismiss the reality that G6 can read and influence minds. With her own colloids now disabled, Lian is overwhelmed by the undeniable truth and suffers a violent anxiety attack.

Yun asks Spencer if, as threatened, he will be made to forget his actions. Spencer admits that removing memories is impossible, promising instead to recondition Yun so that he’ll dismiss everything after a good night’s sleep.

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S01E04: Outbreak ControlPermalink

►► THE YEAR IS 2039

Shaoyong and Will stage a public dinner to seal the renewed partnership between Zhupao and Lassgard Bioteknik, though Will secretly asks the restaurant chef to prepare him a version of the Chairman’s Platter without Lassgard tuna. The dinner encourages the wealthy to double down on their consumption of Lassgard tuna, leaving Sunil and Connie unable to convince authorities that it presents a biorisk.

►► OPENING TITLES

Connie meets with Efua while attending a medical conference, revealing that they each contributed to the development of colloids but had never met in person before. They share their experiences of working with Spencer, who designed the first colloid prototype. Connie mentions that she had her own colloid disabled after ending a brief relationship with Spencer, but they are interrupted before she can explain why.

Sunil suffers a nervous breakdown when his gender identity becomes the subject of Will’s continued harassment campaign against him. He accepts a medical colloid from the Canadian clinical trial on Connie’s advice, which allows him to recover remarkably quickly. When Sunil asks her if she has a colloid of her own, Connie deflects by talking about her father, who was able to regain the use of his paralysed arm thanks to a colloid.

Jinping has reinstated Shaoyong’s party membership in response to his partnership with Will, though Lei warns Shaoyong not to put any trust in either. During a heated exchange, Bowen defends Connie against Will’s harassment and blames Shaoyong for the death of Yixing, whom Shaoyong had once recommended for the Lassgard tuna promotional livestream. Shaoyong angrily demands Bowen’s resignation.

Sunil joins Connie in Düsseldorf, where they conduct a series of tests that establish prion transmission between infected Lassgard tuna and humans. Fretting over a gap in his epidemiological data, Sunil discovers that the prions are also spreading in hospitals via reusable neurosurgical equipment. When Sunil mentions that he hasn’t returned to his Indian hometown of Dharwad since childhood, Connie suggests they travel there together one day.

Investigative reporter Anse Daems is contacted by an anonymous source inside Lassgard Bioteknik who leaks evidence that the company is covering up the prion infections. Connie’s analysis of the data confirms her theory that Lassgard tuna are being fed bovine waste material infected with mad cow disease, passing prions to humans. Anse’s reporting on the so-called mad fish disease shifts public opinion against Will, who goes into hiding.

China begins to censor all news related to Lassgard tuna and mad fish disease, blocking access to foreign data and refusing any cooperation with the WHO. Unable to contact Will, Shaoyong and Spencer realise that he has knowingly poisoned them. When Jinping suspends Zhupao’s Canadian trial of colloids, Shaoyong ignores Lei’s advice and contacts Roshan, who proposes a plan that involves Yang Jinglei, the director of the WHO.

Called to a meeting with Jinglei where they expect her to silence their work, Sunil and Connie are surprised to learn that she plans to declare mad fish disease a pandemic, despite not warranting that level of alarm. Overruling Connie on the medical name she had suggested, Jinglei announces the pandemic to the world as Cariappa-Muren disease (CMD) and indicates that Zhupao-provided colloids will be part of the WHO’s response strategy.

When Shaoyong privately confesses his desire to make Will pay, Spencer hints at the various ways he can remotely program Will’s colloid to severely disable or even kill him. He holds a finger gun to his head to mimic the act.

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S01E05: Altered StatesPermalink

►► THE YEAR IS 2049

With Kaileng off his scent, Spencer wonders what to do with him. He goes to ask Lei and finds him being threatened by ▒▒▒▒▒▒, seen as a dark void that warps reality around itself. In a distorted voice that leaves him cowering and in pain, ▒▒▒▒▒▒ scolds Lei for failing to act in Zhupao’s fight against Baoqiang. When Spencer is alone in his office with ▒▒▒▒▒▒, it appears to him as Roshan, who angrily asks about Connie.

►► OPENING TITLES

After offering to shelter Lian in Dharwad, Efua confirms that she sent the drone with the baffle and collocidal to help, but denies any involvement with the attack on Shaoyong. Efua claims the anti-surveillance tech was made available to her at the rental house by someone on their way to Dharwad with knowledge of the real Adira, which Zhupao is covering up with the mass delusion of an elusive hacker.

When Roshan learns that Spencer shot down Shaoyong’s helicopter and turned Sunil and Efua into scapegoats, he loses his temper and physically threatens Spencer. After he calms down, Roshan promises to deal with Baoqiang and keep Adira contained. Commending Spencer for his reconditioning work on Kaileng, Roshan suggests using his access to the Russian investigation to shed light on what Yuri was planning.

Lian starts feeling less tired and more like herself, which Efua attributes to her disabled colloids. She explains that its mass access to people’s minds has evolved G6 into a collective unconscious that infects colloids and their users with Zhupao’s delusional worldview. When Lian asks about Adira, Efua describes it as a dark void inside G6, something that is brainjacking all awareness of itself, adding her suspicion that Zhupao is afraid of Adira getting out.

Kaileng reacts as if he’s being brainjacked on the spot when faced with ▒▒▒▒▒▒, but finds himself able to briefly fight his colloid and discern a human presence inside the void. After reconditioning Kaileng into believing that Yuri was the target of the drone attack, Spencer starts to needle him for insights into the Russian side of the investigation. He learns about Yuri’s bodyguard, Matvey Kozlov, who disappeared in India a week before Yuri travelled to China.

Lian and Efua are joined by Connie, now walking with a cane, and Matvey, who claims Yuri was meant to accompany them. Connie is angered by Lian’s presence and argues with Efua, who insists that she helped Lian because they are both suffering from being associated with Adira. Once Efua stresses that she has similarly arranged for Sunil to use a collocidal and travel to Dharwad outside G6 surveillance, Connie relents.

Roshan suspects that Yuri had been harbouring Connie for the past decade in the hope of using her knowledge of Adira to bolster his campaign for the Russian presidency. Using G6 to extrapolate their individual movements and intersections, Spencer determines that Connie is attempting to meet with Sunil in Dharwad before exposing Adira. He gleans from the colloid of the bus passenger who recognised Lian that she also absconded there.

After Baoqiang lifts the trading stop on Zhupao and pulls Kaileng off the investigation, ▒▒▒▒▒▒ compels Lei to take the credit for engineering this surrender. When Roshan returns, Spencer reports that he tracked down Connie at the rental house by hacking into the camera of a smart lens in Matvey’s eye. He gleefully notes that its interface includes a live transcript of Connie’s mind, revealing that Matvey has implanted her with a colloid.

Connie tries to warn Efua that Matvey is not to be trusted, but he intervenes when he learns her intention. The lens interface shows Connie scowling at Matvey while thinking a repeated mantra at him: get out of my head | get out of my head | get out of my head | get out of my head

►► CUT TO BLACK, CREDITS

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S01E06: Elite PanicPermalink

►► THE YEAR IS 2039

Held responsible for causing the CMD pandemic, Will is hiding out in an undisclosed safe house, where he wakes up one night screaming in agony and unable to move. When his body is recovered in the morning, the police find that he became the victim of a cyberattack: his colloid was brainjacked to immobilise him with back pain while the house’s heating system was hacked to raise the ambient temperature and induce hyperthermia.

►► OPENING TITLES

Attributing Will’s betrayal to the personality-changing symptoms of a CMD infection, Shaoyong apologises to Bowen and offers him the role of Zhupao’s CTO to lead its partnership with the WHO for the distribution of colloids that can diagnose CMD. Highlighting Connie’s former work on adapting colloids for the detection of prions, Spencer suggests a joint appearance with her and Sunil to boost colloid uptake.

Connie objects to the WHO strategy to mass diagnose CMD using colloids, earning her the support of Yuri. She also refuses any association with Zhupao, arguing that Spencer is deliberately downplaying the permanence of a colloid implant. When her father falls gravely ill, Connie asks Sunil to assume her role on the WHO emergency committee. As Sunil confides his feelings of transness in Connie, they express their love for each other.

Increasingly paranoid and unstable, Shaoyong personally injects a colloid during a press demonstration and showcases a negative diagnosis, defying China’s continued refusal to acknowledge CMD. On the advice of Spencer and Roshan, he also stresses that, unlike other brain implants on the market, colloids avoid all risk of transmitting prions. After dodging questions about Will’s assassination, Shaoyong spins the event to call for better protection against brainjacking.

Sunil’s analysis of the epidemiological data reflects that CMD infection numbers are being inflated by people experiencing false symptoms due to the wealthy painting CMD as more dangerous and widespread than it really is. When one of Sunil’s early reports on the psychological impact of CMD is leaked, international headlines exaggerate CMD cases as rising in the millions, further fueling mass panic before Jinglei issues a correction.

More and more people are accepting colloid implants to allay fears of having contracted CMD and avoid the growing stigma associated with the disease, leading to a public misconception that colloids work as a vaccine. Suspecting that Shaoyong is encouraging this misconception, Sunil’s attempts to report CMD phobia are met with resistance from Jinglei, who removes him from the WHO emergency committee.

►► THE YEAR IS 2040

After working with Anse on a book about her role in the discovery of CMD, Connie agrees to accompany Jinglei on a WHO mission to assess the pandemic in China, which is softening its censorship of CMD. Following the book’s release, a section with Connie‘s criticism of China’s handling of the pandemic goes viral, leading China to stall its negotiations with Jinglei and withdraw Connie’s invitation.

In a further blow to Zhupao and the WHO, China announces a deal with Russia and India to distribute CMD-diagnostic implants developed by Huawei but clearly derived from colloids. Suspecting Bowen of having facilitated China’s theft of colloid technology, Shaoyong asks Spencer to search Bowen’s neural data for signs of guilt. Roshan convinces Spencer to confirm guilt regardless so Shaoyong will let them keep experimenting.

While taking care of her father, Connie makes an unsettling discovery about his worsening illness. As she contacts Spencer to ask him for a private meeting, a shot of her desktop reveals a document titled ADIRA.

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S01E07: Intrusive ThoughtsPermalink

►► THE YEAR IS 2049

After confessing his fear that Roshan was going to sell him out, Spencer asks how he forced Baoqiang to back down. Roshan reveals that he threatened Baoqiang with a positive CMD diagnosis, which would force him to abdicate. With Lei in prime position to succeed Shaoyong, Spencer asks Roshan to back his own bid for the throne. Roshan hesitates, suggesting that Spencer needs to deal with Connie first.

►► OPENING TITLES

Pressed by Efua for information, Connie insists that she’s unable to expose Adira until Sunil arrives safely at the rental house, implying that Spencer threatened to kill him if anyone discovered its true nature. As she relates her yearslong alliance with Yuri, Connie neglects to add that she left his side when he reneged on his promise to protect Sunil and use Adira to bring down G6, an omission that Matvey gleans from her mind.

Spencer ignores Roshan’s advice and becomes obsessed with reading Connie’s thoughts. When Spencer is mentioned in a conversation with Efua about whether Shaoyong was himself brainjacked to dismiss the potential of G6, Connie reveals that she ended her relationship with Spencer because he had tried to “cure” her asexuality by secretly using her colloid to increase her sexual drive. Spencer learns what Connie really thinks of him for that.

Lian suffers another anxiety attack after admitting that she accidentally approved the drone override on her G6 terminal. Connie calms her down by teaching her a mental dazzling technique, describing her mantra as noise that renders neural data unusable. When Lian mentions the quadruped drone that playfully interacted with her baffle, Efua explains that its AI functions were trained on data gathered from attack dogs implanted with colloids.

Roshan convinces Spencer that China will not accept him as the head of Zhupao. When Spencer worries that Lei will never let him stay on as CTO, Roshan reassures him that he has compromising material to thwart Lei’s leadership bid, establishing himself as kingmaker in Zhupao’s succession crisis. After Roshan leaves, Lei and Yun are individually confronted with ▒▒▒▒▒▒ and brainjacked regarding their interactions with Spencer.

Eager to prove himself, Spencer succeeds in using Matvey’s smart lens interface to send him a covert message, leveraging his ties to far-right circles in Russia to offer him Zhupao’s political backing in exchange for bringing in Connie. With Sunil’s fate uncertain, Efua warns Connie that time is running out to enact her plan regarding Adira. When Connie is about to reveal Adira’s true nature, Spencer panics and orders Matvey to kill her.

Holding Connie at gunpoint, Matvey bargains with Spencer for personal access to G6. When Connie realises what’s happening, she rails against Spencer and starts antagonising Matvey, who shoots her in the shoulder. Lian runs out the front door in a blind panic while Efua uses Connie’s cane to knock Matvey’s gun away. After he gains the upper hand in the ensuing fight, Matvey reaches for his gun, which suddenly vanishes into thin air.

Stunned in disbelief, Matvey takes a moment too long to realise that Lian never left the house but instead used one of the baffles to acquire the gun. Firing from inside the baffle, Lian kills Matvey with three shots that appear only as their muzzle flashes. After it fails from the bullet punctures, Lian casts off the baffle and clutches her ears from being deafened by its acoustic dampener. Spencer curses, his access reduced to Matvey’s view of the ceiling.

Efua runs over to Connie, who pulls a data drive from her pocket and begs her to deliver it to Sunil, using her last words to say that the drive contains Adira. Spencer witnesses Connie’s final thought as she dies from her gunshot wound.

►► CUT TO BLACK, CREDITS

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S01E08: Contact TracingPermalink

►► THE YEAR IS 2040

After accepting Shaoyong’s offer to replace Bowen as Zhupao’s CTO, Spencer arrives at Connie‘s house. His romantic hopes are shattered when Connie reveals that her father’s illness led her to the discovery that colloids are infecting people with prions that cause a life-threatening inflammatory disease, which Connie named after the affected protein: acquired deficiency of the interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (ADIRA).

Realising that his colloid design poisoned Shaoyong the same way Will poisoned them both with Lassgard tuna, Spencer blames Connie for ruining his life. He fails in a desperate attempt to take her life, vowing instead that Sunil will pay with his if ADIRA is ever made public. Asserting that colloids can be made to kill their users, Spencer points a finger gun at his head and threatens Sunil with instant death before walking out the door.

►► OPENING TITLES

After Connie is reported missing and her father dies of a massive stroke, Sunil is approached by Jinglei, who will reinstate him to the WHO emergency committee if he agrees to take Connie’s place in the WHO mission to China. Though Sunil suspects the Chinese government of having orchestrated Connie’s disappearance, he eventually accepts the invitation after conferring with Anse and travels to Beijing alongside Jinglei.

Shaoyong has taken refuge in Canada to avoid reprisals from Jinping. With Jinglei out of reach, Spencer suggests using Sunil’s colloid to turn him into an unwitting informant against Jinping’s efforts to seize the neurotech market from Zhupao. Applying his lessons from Bowen’s neurosurveillance, Spencer first starts monitoring Sunil’s mind for any awareness of Connie reaching out to him, which neurologically amplifies Sunil’s longing for her.

Sunil‘s meeting with Jinping is cut short after he makes a comment about China’s needless distancing policies for CMD. His subsequent attempts to assess the CMD pandemic are severely obstructed by government officials, who restrict his movements and data access. After speaking with Jinglei, Sunil realises that their role in China is being misrepresented to justify the spread of Huawei’s implants, a pretext that Anse had warned him about.

In trying to recondition Sunil, Spencer discovers that the Canadian colloid trial has already biased the neural data favourably towards Zhupao due to the medical efficacy of colloids, with Roshan realising that Huawei is working with the same biased data. Roshan advises Shaoyong to return to China and use Sunil for a showdown with Jinping. When Shaoyong hesitates for fear of arrest and torture, Roshan uses his colloid to dial down his anxiety.

Sunil is covertly contacted by Li Qiao Fan, a psychiatrist whose reporting on CMD phobia is being suppressed. After consulting a copy of her work, Sunil accidentally uses a specific term coined by Qiao while bringing up the issue with Jinglei, which betrays her actions to the Chinese government. Roshan ambushes a dejected Sunil in his hotel room, claiming that Qiao is at risk of being disappeared and offering them both asylum at Zhupao headquarters.

Sunil and Qiao join Shaoyong for a public address to declare his return to China and condemn Jinping’s mishandling of the CMD pandemic, leading to mass protests. Shaoyong is abducted by Chinese security officers and brought before a bedridden Jinping, who is languishing in the final stages of a CMD infection, implying that Sunil met with a body double. Speaking via mind-to-speech colloid, Jinping asks Shaoyong what it is he wants.

During a televised announcement of Zhupao’s newly exclusive role in providing CMD-diagnostic colloids worldwide, Spencer points a finger gun at Sunil’s head as a veiled threat to Connie, which she witnesses from an office building owned by Yuri.

►► CUT TO BLACK, CREDITS

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S01E09: Nerve EndingPermalink

►► THE YEAR IS 2049

Urging that they owe it to Connie to try, Lian volunteers to deliver Connie’s data drive to Sunil. Wounded from her fight with Matvey, Efua plans to stay behind and send out a livestream of what happened, which will direct Sunil to a secondary meeting point at a hotel across town. After Lian takes a baffle and heads out in the night to find Sunil, Efua reveals Connie’s death to the world, leading to her arrest.

►► OPENING TITLES

Spencer learns from Efua’s livestream that Connie and Matvey are dead. Surmising that Lian has fled the rental house, Spencer overrides part of the drone curtain that she passed through to enter Dharwad and tasks it with her capture based on her G6 biometrics. Unable to hear its approach, Lian is tracked by the same quadruped drone that nearly spotted her during her crossing. It attacks before she can make use of her baffle to hide.

In the struggle, the drone breaks Lian’s arm and crushes two of her fingers in its hydraulics. When Spencer gives the order to kill, the drone keeps Lian pinned while G6 shows the same human authorisation request that previously delayed his assassination of Shaoyong. Infuriated, Spencer is suddenly grabbed by Kaileng, who is being steered by ▒▒▒▒▒▒. Unable to cancel the request before it clears, Kaileng looks on in horror as the drone moves in for the kill.

Lian recoils as the drone is dragged off her by a group of bystanders, who manage to destroy it with concerted effort. Lian turns down help to avoid being recognised and keeps moving while clutching her broken arm. The other drones track Lian’s location from the signal of their downed mate, but back off right before converging on her. Lian now unknowingly owes her life to Roshan, who succeeded in overriding Spencer’s drone tasking.

Arriving at the hotel, Lian finds Sunil checked in under the trans name he had confided to Connie. After Sunil tends to Lian’s injuries, she hands him Connie’s data drive, which contains a body of research into ADIRA as well as a personal message to him. Realising that she successfully solved the protein folding problem, Sunil sends Connie’s research to Anse, who publishes it and implicates Spencer in the creation and cover-up of ADIRA.

Roshan dismisses Kaileng and returns Spencer‘s phone, which is spamming the same notification that betrayed the meeting between Yuri and Shaoyong, confirming that the G6 search for ADIRA probes people’s minds for anyone learning of its true nature. Roshan admits that he’s been plotting this outcome all along, setting up Spencer to take the fall for their actions while turning Lei into the same mindless puppet that Shaoyong had become.

Roshan hints at a plan to ensure that G6 will not only survive the revelation of ADIRA but thrive on it, claiming that Spencer was the one who suggested this plan when he first told Roshan about ADIRA in 2041. Spencer has no memory of this, leading Roshan to wonder how he forced himself to forget what happened back then without having a colloid. As he returns to take Spencer away, Kaileng fights his colloid long enough to pierce ▒▒▒▒▒▒ and lock eyes with Roshan.

Lian’s hearing returns as she bonds with Sunil over the hotel cat. Sunil reveals that his feelings of transness were being suppressed by his colloid, and that every night for the past decade he dreamed of Connie reaching out to him. After learning that Efua was taken into protective custody by Jagrati, Sunil and Lian discuss their next move when they are alerted to a news report about the rapid spread of a dangerous new variant of CMD.

Kaileng escorts Spencer to a detention facility, where he’s implanted with a colloid while being processed. When Kaileng checks his notes, he frowns at a hand-drawn sketch of Roshan that he doesn’t remember having made.

►► CUT TO BLACK, CREDITS

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S01E10: Network EffectsPermalink

►► THE YEAR IS 2040

Spencer organises a meeting with Sunil to offer him the opportunity to oversee the creation of a globalised biosurveillance network with the backing of Zhupao, China, and the WHO. As Sunil voices his doubts about the offer, Roshan uses his colloid to lower his anxiety. Sunil declines the offer regardless but accepts the next day, leading Spencer to determine that the neural reconditioning process is boosted by sleep.

After arranging for Sunil to work from Canada, Spencer introduces him to Efua, whose design for an environment-friendly learning model will form part of the biosurveillance network’s AI capabilities, and to Yun, who’ll lead the development of its physical infrastructure. Sunil, Efua, and Yun become friends as they work to develop the first version of what will eventually become G6, all while Spencer publicly keeps close to Sunil.

►► OPENING TITLES

Shaoyong tours various countries inside China’s sphere of influence to promote the adoption of G6. Yuri approaches him at a function in Russia and promises him there will be a reckoning one day, with Shaoyong failing to catch Yuri‘s playful hint that Bowen is unwittingly aiding his development of collocidals. Spencer meets with Chinese military officials, including Kaileng, to have China’s drone fleet integrated into G6.

Investigating a rise in cases of CMD, Sunil discovers with the help of Anse that colloids are causing CMD-like symptoms due to a shortage of brain glucose, which colloids need as a power source. Fearing that Zhupao is using colloids for periods that far exceed the requirements of CMD-specific biosurveillance or medical neurostimulation, Efua adds her suspicion that the G6 AIs are being leveraged to process massive undisclosed data sets.

When Sunil and Efua lose their G6 admin privileges, Spencer claims that he and Shaoyong have been locked out as well, making the Chinese government seem responsible. Using an exploit to regain access to G6, Sunil finds that its AIs are being trained on masses of neural data that Zhupao is illegally mining through the CMD-diagnostic colloids. Anse concludes that Zhupao killed Connie after she somehow learned about this neural mining.

Efua and Anse decide to expose Zhupao’s actions, but their credibility is weakened when Sunil later admits to having trouble believing that colloids can read minds, which is revealed to be the work of Roshan. Surprised that the brainjacking is strong enough to make someone refute their own discovery, Roshan rolls it out across all of G6, ensuring that anyone with a colloid will start dismissing the neural mining.

►► THE YEAR IS 2041

Spencer and Roshan are watching a UN vote on the international adoption of G6. Unnerved at the prospect of the vote passing, Spencer breaks down and confesses the existence of ADIRA, his attempted murder of Connie, and his threat to Sunil. Roshan becomes violently angry and almost strangles Spencer to death, stopping only when interrupted by Lei, whom Roshan threatens into leaving.

After Spencer recovers, he suggests making the symptoms of ADIRA seem like a dangerous new variant of CMD, which would stress the importance of G6 and its use of colloids. Arguing that G6 needs to gain a larger foothold first, Roshan forbids Spencer from deploying the network to brainjack any awareness of ADIRA before it’s exposed, warning that they cannot foresee what will happen if G6 starts prompting minds for an as yet absent thought.

As the UN vote passes, Spencer disobeys Roshan’s order and activates the G6-wide keyword search for ADIRA anyway. At the same time, Roshan gets the idea to brainjack himself from G6, which turns him into ▒▒▒▒▒▒.

►► CUT TO BLACK, CREDITS

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VIEWING ORDERSPermalink

Season 01 of NEUROCRACY can be rearranged in three additional viewing orders to change the impact of specific plot and character moments. What may be blinding revelation in one viewing becomes ominous foreshadowing in another.

	Chronologic	Flashback	Inverted
1	E02: Index Case	E01: Phantom Pain	E02: Index Case
2	E04: Outbreak Control	E03: Memory Hole	E01: Phantom Pain
3	E06: Elite Panic	E05: Altered States	E04: Outbreak Control
4	E08: Contact Tracing	E07: Intrusive Thoughts	E03: Memory Hole
5	E10: Network Effects	E09: Nerve Ending	E06: Elite Panic
6	E01: Phantom Pain	E02: Index Case	E05: Altered States
7	E03: Memory Hole	E04: Outbreak Control	E08: Contact Tracing
8	E05: Altered States	E06: Elite Panic	E07: Intrusive Thoughts
9	E07: Intrusive Thoughts	E08: Contact Tracing	E10: Network Effects
10	E09: Nerve Ending	E10: Network Effects	E09: Nerve Ending

Chronologic: starting with the 2039 timeline and then jumping to the episodes in 2049 turns brainjacking into a more insidious reveal while twisting the true nature of Adira into dramatic irony.

Flashback: because Adira is never explicitly disclosed in the 2049 timeline, starting with those episodes and then jumping to 2039 creates a longer buildup to its ultimate reveal.

Inverted: the same interwoven structure as the original run but with each pair of episodes switched around, resulting in different interpretations for certain character motivations.

SEASON 02 - XXPermalink

Season 01 of NEUROCRACY features a complete story arc that establishes its universe with a satisfying balance between questions and answers. To avoid a repeated formula growing stale, subsequent seasons can adopt an anthology format with self-contained stories that stretch across one or multiple episodes while featuring their own animation styles.

CUPOID’S ARROWPermalink

The latest season of the hit reality dating show Are You For Real? becomes the subject of a murder trial when the show’s AI host is implicated in the death of a contestant.

REVERIEPermalink

A long-distance couple experiments with dreamsharing technology that ends up trapping one of them in a dying dream while the other attempts to wake them.

SECOND ADVENTPermalink

A former member of an American doomsday cult that has occupied the state of Texas is forced to rejoin its ranks as part of a dangerous undercover operation.

SKYNETPermalink

An homage to The Terminator that reimagines its titular threat as sentient software sent back in time to control people through their brain implants and ensure its own existence.