A future retrieval system operable to enable searching for future events associated with a set of documents includes at least one memory device configured to store a database of the documents. The system identifies future events associated with the documents and generates temporal data and a confidence value for each future event. The confidence value represents a likelihood of occurrence for the corresponding future event. The system evaluates text associated with the future events to generate event metadata, and indexes the documents with the associated event metadata, temporal data, and confidence levels in the database. The system generates search results corresponding to selected ones of the documents in the database in response to queries which include references to future times, and ranks the search results in accordance with the confidence values associated with the future events associated with the selected documents.
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