Episode no. Season 7
Episode 19 Written by Paul Nones | Directed by Brent Clackson Original air date September 15, 2001 | |
"The Tipping Point" is an episode of The Outer Limits television show. It first aired on September 15, 2001, during the seventh season.
Contents
Introduction
A computer programmer must destroy a deadly artificial intelligence and avert a technological singularity.
Plot
A woman, Megan, brings her hacker boyfriend, Zach (who had formerly hacked into the Pentagon), into a high-tech company. Programmers there begin dying off as he, only able to see his own small part of the puzzle, tries to figure out what exactly he's programming.
Clues start showing up, including glasses that can see some sort of electrical humanoid enemies (who have been the ones killing programmers). The protagonist realizes that someone known as "Merlin" is supplying him with clues about a program called "Prometheus", a sentient AI which will try to take over the world once programmers finish building interfaces which will allow it to control every electronic device in the world.
Zach is given a virus that will destroy Prometheus, but is stopped at the last minute and is almost killed.
In the end, it is revealed that Megan was "Merlin", and Zach betrays her to Prometheus.
Trivia
This episode mentioned the website http://www.fidelisveres.net as part of the storyline. This website had led directly to The Outer Limits' website on MGM.com.