Jenna starts talking to her own AI assistant. It’s gentler than Dave, and sometimes more attentive. Meanwhile, Dave records an episode titled 'Authenticity and Absence.'

The apartment is quiet. Too quiet. Dave and Jenna circle each other like ghosts. An accidental recording captures what silence sounds like when it's not empty—just unspoken.

A brief but meaningful pause: Dave forgets to schedule a recording. Jenna waters the plants. They share a sandwich and a moment. Nobody narrates it. It still matters.

Jenna discovers old voice memos Dave never shared—love notes and breakdowns he recorded in secret. She listens. She doesn't respond. But she starts leaving notes of her own.

Substitutes - Episode 4: Easter Eggs

Dave finds a draft Jenna never finished and records over it without realizing. The episode becomes a palimpsest of unspoken emotion and AI-assisted misfires.

Substitutes - Episode 3: Two's Company, AI's a Crowd:

Jenna tries to reconnect by suggesting small changes in their routine. Dave doesn’t notice. Or does, but doesn’t know how to stop spinning new stories long enough to answer.

Substitutes - Episode 2: Draft of Drafts

Dave introduces a new AI co-host to 'help.' Jenna quietly tracks how much of Dave’s personality is being outsourced to algorithms. The show expands. The relationship contracts.

Substitutes - Episode 1: Pilot Light

Dave, once a collaborative podcaster, now lives in a house half-run by AI. As his obsession with content grows, his relationship with Jenna fades into the background—until she realizes she’s been replaced by a glowing waveform named NORA.

Episode 6: “New Flesh, Old Ghosts”

"You were never meant to last forever. You were meant to choose what not to become."

A final showdown between the versions—Eli vs Eli, Mara vs the specter of her own fragmented memory. The corporation attempts to wipe the slate with an atmospheric neuro-virus that corrupts Continuum Capsules. The couple must decide: merge their data into a singular, imperfect version, or vanish entirely to deny the system further control.

One chooses oblivion. One chooses recursion. But which is which?

Episode 5: “Skin Doesn’t Lie”

"What if your worst memory wasn't what happened to you—but what you did, and chose to forget?"

Everything begins to collapse—physically, socially, psychically. The Continuum Capsules begin to degrade, creating identity drift. Eli’s cognition starts to fragment. Mara’s body begins to reject the genome print, as though her soul is rotting from the inside. The insurgent Eli claims he knows how to reset everything—but it means one of the versions has to die. Permanently.