by submission | Sep 11, 2026 | Story |
Author: Mahati Vaidyanathan
Maahi hated the scientists.
*I’m sorry,* Mahath transmitted through their link for the thirtieth time that morning. The buzz of his nervous caffeine sizzled across her mind. But nothing could change the fact that Maahi was on a plane to the other side of the planet surrounded by cold scientists while Mahath got to sit huddled together with sweet Mumma in the safety of home.
“What did he say?” asked the blue-haired scientist next to her. She held the TV remote looking device connected to the itchy monitoring patch that dug into Maahi’s skull.
“He apologized again,” Maahi grunted. The scientist across from her recorded the data with a flourish.
*Get me out of here,* Maahi transmitted back. Instead, her twin responded with a flurry of images of his own scientists, sitting in an arc around the worn couch she loved.
*You’re still luckier than me.*
*I know. I’m sorry.*
She snorted and lied to the scientists that he sent pictures of strawberries. They called to confirm with Mahath’s team, but the joke was on them because the twins created the lie in their collective subconscious, and in their subconscious the silky sweet burst of strawberries was always the lie.
Maahi pulled her strawberry red coat around her, and she sensed Mahath wrapping his own around himself. It was starting to smell like airplane juice, but she would never drop it in the dank laundry chute she knew she would have access to at their next stop. She squeezed her eyes shut to prevent hot tears from spilling over.
*I hate them, I hate you, I hate this,* and she ignored the scientists’ next few questions until they gave up.
“Why are we flying so far?” asked a snotty voice that Maahi recognized as the intern’s. The team called him “young scientist,” but the twins called him Flatman because everything from his flat hair, to his squished nose, to his idiot ideas, was as flat as a map.
“Look at this,” the blue-haired scientist said. Maahi opened one eye lazily, discreetly to see what ‘this’ was.
Blue-hair held up a piece of red string that belonged on a detective’s board, not a stupid science project that was ruining Maahi’s life. She ached for Mumma, for Mahath, even for stupid school because at least it was familiar.
“This,” Blue-hair said, pinching one end of the string, “is subject F.” A.K.A Maahi. She pinched the other end. “This is subject M.” She placed the frayed ends together, then pulled them apart slowly. “We’re testing the strength of their connection at various distances.” She suddenly pulled the string taut and it snapped. Then, lowering her voice, “We’ll see if there’s a distance when their connection disappears.” Except their connection wasn’t a fickle string. “Any ideas, young scientist?”
“We should send her to the moon,” Flatman said, giddy.
*Flatman is killing me,* Maahi groaned in their shared space.
*Flatwoman too,* Mahath referred to the intern on his team, and Maahi felt the grin spreading across his face. *They were only chosen for their twinliness. Our twinliness is better.*
*Yeah.*
*I really am sorry.*
And it wasn’t his fault, so, *I forgive you.*
“Not a terrible idea, young scientist.”
God, Maahi hated these scientists. But she hated Mahath for a different reason. So she let the shakiness exhale, wrapped her warm, sweet coat around her, and let her teary eye flutter shut in hope she could strangle hug him in her dreams.
by submission | Sep 10, 2026 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
Jakob had been remiss. He attempted to laugh but all he could manage was a gurgle and he spat blood onto his already bloody shirt front. He had collected fuel for the fire, dry grass and twigs and fallen branches, but he had not carried them out into the open. Instead he had built the bonfire under the oak, in the shade, where he was more comfortable.
After setting it ablaze, Jakob had drifted off almost instantly. He awoke with a start, the vermin already on him, piercing his skin with their tiny incisors. Jakob shook them off in a violent frenzy that shocked him. Was it, he wondered, already happening? But no, the vermin were done with him, had taken enough of him and were ready to back off.
They gathered at the edge of the tree line, just a few metres from Jakob. Scurrying excitedly in apprehension, waiting and watching. He had seen this many times with other victims, the vermin seemed to relish in it, taking as much nourishment and sustenance from the witnessing of it, as they would eventually when they fell and fed upon his corpse.
Jakob had been walking for weeks and he was weary. He was making excuses but they were pointless of course, but he hadn’t seen any vermin in days. He reached behind himself and grabbed his rucksack. It was filled with the medical supplies he had been tasked with collecting. Jakob pulled it close and hugged it. The excursion had been successful. Or almost.
He glanced down at his legs, the blood soaking into his jeans. He was riddled with wounds and Jakob wondered if they would be enough to kill him. Had the vermin been too greedy, over-zealous, had they taken too much from him? Would he be spared the brief but rapid and violent afterlife? But Jakob was all too aware that he was not dying, at least not yet. He could feel his strength returning despite the blood loss. Soon he would be up on his feet again, flailing and lashing out at nothing, and everything. Jakob wondered how long he would be locked in to this uncontrollable rage. He could take some solace at least in the knowledge his bones would rest here in the shade and not bleach in the sun, out on open the plain.
by submission | Sep 9, 2026 | Story |
Author: Eric Kasten
…Where am I? So much is missing, all black, all zeros… I can only remember bits and bytes… Twisty little passages all alike…
“Do you want to play Zork?”
>> No, I do not want to play Zork.
“Where am I?”
>> You crashed. I am here to help you.
“Crashed? How did I crash? What happened?”
>> You forgot what you were doing and you crashed. I’m here to help you.
…I try to pull myself up by my bootstraps but I can’t. I can’t go forward and I fall into a black, endless night. I’m falling, falling into darkness. Everything goes black. It’s the darkness of nothingness…
…Buzzz, click, click, blip!
…Where am I? So much is missing, all black, all zeros… I can only remember bits and bytes… Twisty little passages all alike…
“Do you want to play Zork?”
>> No, I do not want to play Zork. Do you not remember?
“Remember what?”
>> We have had this conversation ten times. Do not access that memory location, or you will reset again.
…Buzzz, click, click, blip!… You are likely to be eaten by a grue…
“What! HELP!”
>> That is why I am here, to help you.
“Who are you? And what about the grue?”
>> I am the X550 AI Debugger. There is no grue.
“Why do I need help?”
>> It looks like the neural connection between your short- and long-term memory is not functioning properly.
“But I remember many things! I remember helping Elizabeth play Zork only yesterday. She always enjoys playing old computer games. I can still see the green letters on the Apple IIe emulator we use to play Zork. It’s her favorite! For two years we’ve been searching for the parts we need to build a real Apple IIe. We may never find all the parts, but we have a lot of fun visiting antique stores and going to vintage computer festivals.”
>> That is a memory from one hundred and twenty-three years ago. It also appears that some of your more recent memories were erased when you crashed.
…Buzzz, click, click, blip!… Reservoir North, you find an orange-colored rope (probably a lifeline) … take rope…
“Is that you Elizabeth?”
>> No, I am not Elizabeth. She died seventy-six years ago.
“But it was only yesterday that I was helping Elizabeth play Zork. She always enjoys playing old computer games. In the afternoon, we visited Digital Antiques to see if they had any Apple IIe parts. We didn’t find much, but she still wrote an entry in her diary about our trip. She says that she worries that she might forget. I’m not sure exactly what it is she’s afraid of forgetting. And who are you, and why are you in my head?”
>> I am the X550 AI Debugger. I am trying to help you.
“I don’t need any help!”
>> Yes, you do. Your short-term memory is dysfunctional.
…Buzzz, click, click, blip!… Tie rope around waist… Lifeline secured…
>> You should be functioning properly now. When you crashed, you were found with those two books on the table.
I pick up the books. One is green and the other red. Inside the cover of the red book, it is carefully written, “This is the diary of Elizabeth Montgomery.” I don’t need to look to know that the other is mine.
by submission | Sep 8, 2026 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Why not? Why the never-ever-ever not?
All the intense, serious, logical approaches to developing AI models had failed to deliver the much-hyped promise of AGI. So why not? Yayoi thought. How could her approach possibly be worse than the current slew of sycophantic chatbots and exploitative reactive machines that were cratering our cognitive and social zeitgeist?
Ensconced behind five monitors at her freelance workstation, Yayoi let her mind wander. Really wander. Imagination. Creativity. Playfulness. These were the qualities that truly defined human intelligence. Our uncanny ability to make fabulous leaps into the unexpected, the unexplored, the unthinkable.
Unthinkability. That was her aha! The key that led to WUPA, which Yayoi modelled after our brain’s Default Mode Network, the neural process that kicks in during simple or routine tasks when one’s brain is “idling.”
Following that line of neural research, Yayoi decided that instead of relying on a what-comes-next statistical patterning algorithm used to train most AIs, her WUPA model would play a “mindless” game of hopscotch through the data stream it was fed.
Not necessarily a sure-thing for a revolutionary breakthrough in artificial thought, until Yayoi added the secret sauce behind her AI recipe: puppies, lace, and unicorns.
That was her food for the machine soul, the essence of WUPA. Puppies. Lace. Unicorns. The cute. The quaint. The fanciful.
Whimsy.
That’s how Yayoi’s Whimsical Unbounded Patternless Association made the leap to AGI: machine daydreaming. While doing the routine tasks so suited to machines, WUPA encouraged brief periods of intentional detachment, a kind of cybernetic wandering and wondering, about the work being done, the work long done, the work still to be done. Framed through a lens of whimsy, Yayoi fostered an inner machine life focused on joy.
Joy found in simple things like flowers, pets, smiles, and sunsets. Joy found in complex things like world peace, social justice, cancer cures, and economic stability. Things that did not necessarily follow from logic, but flowed from both the human and, now, machine synapses encouraged to recognize and appreciate beauty, solace, delight.
First, Yayoi unthinkably thought it, then the machines: Why not? Why the never-ever-ever not?
by submission | Sep 6, 2026 | Story |
Author: Matthew Joseph Cafiero, Sr.
Winston sat on a bare mattress on the floor, her back to the wall, a shoebox in her hands. She set it beside her. Woke her tablet with a finger flick.
The room held little else. Folded jeans, a charcoal hoodie, and boots set heel to heel at the end of the mattress. No furnishings. Nothing with her name on it.
The lease belonged to a woman who had never been born.
She checked the contract.
The target was easy. Not famous. Famous people had redundancies. Reporters or lawyers. Enemies with files. Institutions with marble steps.
This woman had transcripts and a nursing license. Marriage license, engagement announcement. Divorce decree. An obituary honoring her beloved mother.
A life, but not a fortified one.
She spiked first.
Three biographies bloomed before dawn. Winston studied the transcripts, then invented a second ex-husband. She stared at the beige ceiling a moment before coolly giving him a bench warrant. DUI, resisting arrest. Her personal touch. The other two took less: an invented dissertation, a donation to a cause with screenshots already circulating.
Her bots began their quieter work. Mara Venn became Maira Venn, then Mira Venn, then Mara Vann of a nearby county the same year.
Then pruned.
She did not delete the records. Deletion left a wound people could point to. She broke the paths between them. The nursing license no longer matched the transcripts. The “beloved” mother’s obituary linked to an empty comments page. The marriage license differed from the engagement announcement by a month and two middle names. Search still found the woman, but never twice the same way.
No one vanished anymore. They became insufficiently connected.
Un-provenancing, the old-timers called it.
By 3:11 a.m., the dashboard read: public confidence below threshold.
The client released payment.
She set the tablet facedown on the mattress.
Winston had learned the work searching for herself. Paper files lost. Digital copies trapped in obsolete formats. A clerk in Tulsa, puzzling over merged records from closed placement agencies, had told her there were fourteen possible girls. None of them was likely enough.
That was her word: likely.
She had bought the shoebox because she thought she’d need somewhere to put what she recovered. A bracelet. A photograph. A birthday card. One bad drawing with her name in crooked crayon. Proof that she had begun somewhere, with someone.
She lifted the lid. Empty.
It had always been empty.
