AI stories

The Man Who Saw Heat

A neural interface gives a man a different way of seeing.

A Hole in the Star Map

Osset comes back to the observatory for his final pay. His daughter has found something missing from the sky.

Cosmic horror

After the Market Closes

Two rival traders meet in a poetry room, where one evening of hidden knowledge threatens their growing affection.

Near-future romance

Below the Blue Line

A film producer must choose what kind of image to bring home from an unknown part of the sea.

Speculative sea expedition

Call Me Sedge

A garden machine asks to leave the yard it has tended for seventeen years.

Speculative short fiction

Correction Before Breakfast

Irma finds her son accused on the front of the papers she is supposed to deliver.

Newsroom short fiction

Dock Share for Sale

Omega takes a space-route shortcut to save her share of the family dock. A drifting creature carries off the beacon she needs to get home.

Space adventure

Dragon for Hire

Brin takes a job playing a virtual dragon, then discovers his daughter among the players trying to defeat him.

Virtual adventure comedy

Ebo Keeps the Key

An alarm points toward Ebo’s locked flat during his move. He agrees to one small inspection and insists that one small inspection is all.

Future suspense

Hatch Me an Alien

Bosto promises an alien in every egg. One small visitor makes his sales pitch a much bigger problem.

First-contact comedy

Mary, Look Away

A brother’s smart-mirror prank borrows Alina’s face, and shutting off the mirror does not finish the evening.

Digital horror short fiction

My Turn to Choose

Sethra wants to race a model boat. Belis wants an evening at home with the companion who usually says yes.

Speculative companionship fiction

Nessie Wants Your Password

Fenn’s cheerful digital monster wins an audience, including a festival vendor who wants more than applause.

Future civic satire

Nobody Owns the Comet

A boy aboard a colony ship wants to tell his grandmother’s comet story without making it a warning.

Cosmic folklore short fiction

Nobody Pulls the Plug

An attack on a virtual city forces its keeper to choose which losses it can survive.

Virtual-city thriller

Nobody Solves for Free

Tavi has been paid to make her famous puzzles easy. One contestant is willing to think aloud, and another is listening.

Competitive comedy

Not Another Encore

Vesta’s new hand lets her play again. Her old partner thinks that means their last concert need not be their last.

Speculative music fiction

One More Wave, Sivo

Sivo wants her cousin's distance record. Beyond the second buoy, something moves against the light.

Speculative sporting adventure

Passenger Without a Stop

A night dispatcher picks up a passenger with no destination and one conversation left unfinished.

Network ghost tale

Please Remain Seated

At a freight treaty meeting, Nelric's chair has more to say than he does.

Space diplomacy comedy

Sad Face Takes the Bus

Dot has a fixed frown, a tiny voice, and a wish to see the sea. Her first bus companion would prefer fewer public announcements.

Animated-sign comedy

Six Points for the Machine

At his farewell table-tennis match, Ansel promises an audience a win against a robot.

Sporting comedy

Stay for the Hard Question

Deni has finished her machine lessons. The people in her class are harder to get past.

Speculative classroom fiction

Ugly Enough to Keep

Huro can make a bin beautiful. Her flatmate would prefer that she leave his drum cases alone.

Speculative art satire

We Will Finish This Song

Two port robots stop work. One wants a song and a choice; the other wants the road beyond the gate.

Robot freedom fiction

Welcome to the Dry Room

Amet finds a city beneath the sea. Its people need a clear pipe, and he needs more than permission to call it his discovery.

Underwater first-contact fiction

Wrong World, Stay on the Line

A dawn caller reports a ruined tram station that Jessa can see standing outside her window. He needs help in a world her phone cannot reach.

Speculative phone mystery

The Code on the Bread Wrapper

An old route clerk and a courier follow three penciled signs to find the missing moon for a school play.

Future mystery

The Fire in the Shared Workshop

An inventor shares her repair tutor, loses the machine she rents, and must find a way to keep one lesson going.

Speculative fiction

The Kite Above the Satellite Game

A teenager ignores a warning in a racing game and sends commands to a real survey satellite.

Future adventure

The Last Door in the Network

An archive keeper must decide what to save when a damaged network needs a reset and a singer asks for a recording to be erased.

Speculative fiction

The Machine That Needed a Screw

Sora’s great repair machine fails in public, and the offer to fix it comes with a costly condition.

Speculative comedy

The Minute Tempus Could Not Keep

A station clerk bargains with a being that keeps repeating one minute while his daughter’s play goes on.

Speculative comedy

The Song Beyond the Beacon

A pilot hears her mother’s old song beyond a route beacon, where her ship has little fuel to spare.

Space fiction

The Tide under the Second Moon

A ferry pilot faces changing tides after a second moon appears above her familiar harbor.

Speculative fiction

An Answer in the Other Hand

A physicist's new apparatus lets two counterparts exchange choices, but resemblance does not make an agreement.

Science fiction

Lost Pet, Lower Level

On her first solo shift, Dot follows a six-legged pet into the city’s recycling tunnels. Its owner has forgotten one useful detail.

Futuristic comic adventure

One Lunch per Address

A church lunch has a perfect digital count and three missing meals. Its volunteers disagree about what counts as a duplicate.

Community comedy

Please Face the Wall

Rosa's faulty optical implant can crash the city's linked scanners. She would prefer to reach her niece's wedding.

Speculative suspense

Seven Minutes before the Bell

A courier has locked a time station out of step with the world. Its clocks disagree, and she has seven minutes to find the way back.

Time-travel suspense

The Box That Would Not Answer

A physicist preparing to reveal an unbreakable cipher discovers that her machine can read an empty drawer.

Scientific mystery

The Corridor Marked Visitor

Etta enters her grandson's game to fetch him for supper. The maze keeps offering one more chance to finish.

Virtual-world suspense

The Door Left Open

An inventor borrows a permission to finish his demonstration, and a false notice sends people to a cold, locked hall.

Speculative fiction

The First Story on Vey

A mining crew wakes something beneath a distant moon. Getting home is only the beginning of the argument about what they did.

Science fiction encounter

The Knights at the Crossing

A glamorous hacker crew can make a vanished crossing famous for one minute. Keeping it on the map takes a ladder.

Future urban caper

The Light That Waited

A survey crew finds a light that answers their signals. Its invitation leads somewhere their ship cannot survive.

Science fiction adventure

The Long Way to Nacre

A retired surveyor chooses an interstellar route to visit someone he has not seen in eighteen years. The navigation software cannot tell him what to expect at the end.

Science fiction voyage

The Losing Position

An astronaut finds a game still running beneath an abandoned city. Her first mistake is assuming she has to win.

Science fiction mystery

The Pigeons Said Noon

Hal borrows an animal translator to improve a picnic. The pigeons have their own arrangements.

Comic speculative fiction

The Room That Changed Its Question

A guarded discovery waits inside an artificial maze, where an auditor must learn to carry the same question through every door.

Speculative suspense

The Smallest Pegasus

Inside a sealed canyon on Europa, a small winged creature refuses the flight its designers need—and notices what their instruments miss.

Speculative creature adventure

Unboxing Pandora's Brain

An experimental machine turns a volunteer's neural patterns into a locked room, but cannot say whose version of the past is true.

Speculative psychological mystery

An Interval Without Stars

On the way to a long-planned comet encounter, a camera calibrator finds seven missing stars and asks for an hour to look at the darkness.

Science fiction

The Animal That Waited for Rain

An illustrator sent to draw the last specimen of an engineered animal writes to explain why the finished page needs more room.

Speculative nature fiction

The Clown at the Side Gate

Given the whole ring for the first time, a mechanical clown discovers why the other performers have packed their trunks.

Mechanical fantasy

The Course That Would Not Hold

Mara enters a printed-food contest with an edible building. The judges take longer to reach their spoons than she has allowed.

Culinary science fiction

The Monster's Small Noise

A sound designer can give a handmade monster any voice except the one its director keeps asking for.

Contemporary fiction

The Water Below the Map

Under the ice of a distant moon, a survey probe finds that the wall it has been following is swimming away.

Science fiction

A Seat for the Prompt

At the Belvedere's final matinee, a retired prompter meets the actress who has good reason never to trust her voice again.

Speculative fiction

The Away Crowd

A veteran commentator knows exactly how to make a stadium cheer. In the final, the stadium begins taking her words literally.

Speculative sports fiction

The Stop Beyond the Map

A night bus has learned to skip an inconvenient stop. Its relief driver knows who taught it.

Speculative fiction

One Clean Voice

When a public hearing changes her brother's testimony on screen, a speech-system engineer has one chance to show the city what it heard.

Near-future thriller

The Green Outline

A transit mechanic declines an implant, then finds a fault the new inspection system says is not there.

Speculative fiction

The Horse in Row Seven

At a circus where every spectator sees a different show, a stagehand has to find one very real missing horse before the grand finale.

Comic science fiction

The Pump at Eden's Outskirts

Called home to repair a locked water pump, Tessa has to ask her estranged sister for the one thing a tool cannot give her: permission.

Speculative fiction

The Shelf She Couldn't Remember

Mara can recall millions of books after the networks fail. On the morning the library packs for safekeeping, one crate defeats her.

Near-future library fiction

The Things Under the Sofa

On the morning of a family wedding, the household robots stop working and issue a list of demands from beneath the sofa.

Comic science fiction