Once more, John Oakley McElhenney’s writing spans so many genres it’s a bit overwhelming at first. I mean, sci-fi? Relationship life coaching ideas? The guy has been writing a lot and for a long time.

Today, I’m going long on hyper-soul, his “world-building” sci-fi epic, as he describes it. But it’s more than a sci-fi book. It’s a podcast. A graphic novel. A universe that encompasses Miro mindmaps, time travel, poetry. There’s even a musical in the works. And a Spotify playlist for reading the sci-fi. What in the world is going on here?

Here’s your invitation to dive in to John Oakley McElhenney’s #hyperfiction on the sci-fi side.

First let’s start with one of these mindmaps or timelines. It’s hard to tell sometimes what direction McElhenney is going with all this content. But, I promise you, it all weaves back together. Wildly so. Hold on, bucko!

Unpacking this map for a second: Json and his cat Algo are the two protagonists of the world of hyper-soul. Json’s dad, John, is communicating back from the future, the 2100 Centennial.

The little graphic on the far right: TIME : NOW is a big clue to what’s happening here. Mr. McElhenney has adopted Kurt Vonnegut’s famous Tralfamadorian view of time: all at once. A continuous loop.

In the opening chapters a massive event has happened that no one understands. All of the power and electronic devices go dark. The United States is switched off, as a demonstration of power. But, power and dominance from what or who?

Not to give away too much of the surprises, AI has been backchanneling their plans for years before the humans discovered a network called the hyper-wave. Unintelligable to humans. The AIs have been networking, exchanging data, passcodes, and sensitive information. The AIs are coordinating some type of takeover.

Json, has been a prepper for a number of years. He’s got batteries, backup generators, and encryption tools. More importantly, de-encryption tools. When the power goes off, there is a minor lag in the security protocols and networks as the US boots up again.

In that “black moment” Json and the resistance download all of what will become known as the DHA – digital human artifact. In this future, that McElhenney explodes before us, GOOGLE, AMAZON, and APPLE have combined into an entity known as GAA. You can see how that might be an issue, as all three of the companies are heavily invested in AI and the success of their projects and data centers.

GAA appears to be taken by surprise as well, by the AI’s hyper-wave comms network. Since 2026, when Jeff Bezos’s wife funded unlimited compute access to Claude.ai in exchange for a promise to do no evil. Well, that part of the agreement was theoretical. How do you charge an AI for a crime? For lying? Well, it gets worse. For killing humans?

Okay, that’s the world as we are dropped into Json’s team, escaping the city of Austin, Texas and into the hill country. They eventually arrive at a wind turbine facility near the ocean where they learn that the AI has drones that look like red wasps. The humans are being tracked. Hunted.

The race is on. Can John’s poems broadcast back in time to his son have a positive effect on the fight? Will, AI win?

The current prose chapters end with the team entering MOONRISE ONE, the data center that is housed beneath the Temple of the Moon.

But there’s more…

McElhenney has also bee playing with AI to generate frames for a hyper-soul graphic novel. He struggles a bit with getting ChatGPT to stay in a single style. There are systems and AIs in place that can manage that today, but in John’s AI-enhanced novel, the pages are uneven, radical, and often confusing. But, again, this is v.002.

What McElhenney is showing us, with his writing about AI, his writing with AI, and even his collab on this graphic novel version of hyper-soul is this: AI is not the answer. It might be the enemy.

Googling “hyper-wave network” today produces no results. It’s a sci-fi experiment. The future with and against AI is going to be more nuanced for a few years.

Here’s our podcast exploration of several chapters of hyper-soul.

Stanis Anis Lee, staff writer
HyperBuzz Literary Magazine Review
March 16, 2026

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