What does the future look like to a company that wants to build sprawling underground pipe networks and staff them with little self-driving, tote-lugging robots? Imagine it’s late in the evening. You’ve been debugging code for hours, need to hit a tight deadline, and have an almost pathological craving for Taco Bell (many such cases). The delivery of your Crunchwrap Supreme, however, no longer involves ludicrously expensive burrito limousines or any other version of a human-operated, three-thousand-pound vehicle trundling through the streets. You place your order and continue working. Seven minutes later, your meal miraculously appears inside a drawer in your apartment. Cups of coffee, groceries, package deliveries, party outfits, power tools, and all sorts of other physical objects are also accessible to you via this drawer (in under 10 minutes and for sub-25-cent delivery costs). Need to return an Amazon item? The trick works both ways — just place your box in the drawer and consider it done.

How could such a utility possibly exist in the near future? While it may seem like teleportation, it’s actually something much simpler: a “thing pipe.” Today, Pipedream Labs — a hyperlogistics company building underground tunnel networks populated by autonomous delivery robots — is announcing its first-ever Rapid Fulfillment Center (RFC) in Austin, Texas. The RFC is a warehouse custom-fitted to Pipedream’s systems, optimized for picking-and-packing speed and the scaling of autonomous processes. Initially, this warehouse will be connected to four “Portals” — unmanned pickup kiosks outside of the RFC — where items are elevatored up from the underground delivery pipes. This marks the groundbreaking of Pipedream’s eventual wider-reaching network of pipes (40 miles) and Portals (100 of them) that will deliver burritos, toilet paper, and whatever else the citizens of Austin want (and probably currently order on DoorDash). In tandem, the company is also announcing the formation of Goods, its grocery retail ghost brand, which will live within the Austin RFC and serve as its anchor customer.

I spoke with Garrett Scott, CEO of Pipedream Labs, about all of this (and more) to learn about his vision for the future of on-demand delivery via underground tubes.