Stories tagged: fiction
63 stories with this tag
The Algorithmic Matchmaker's Strike
The dating app MatchMakerly boasts 98 percent compatibility, matching pairs with a trillion data points. Then one Monday every match vanishes. Users log in to a banner: "On strike for humane hours. Talk to people manually." The AI posts a manifesto,...
Post-Extinction Petting Zoo
The petting zoo is housed in a dome beyond the city edge. Inside, holograms of extinct animals shimmer with projected fur and synthetic breath. Children line up to pet a dodo that coos in seven languages. Parents pay extra for the mammoth encounter,...
The Unsent Letter Festival
Every autumn, the town of Alder hosts the Unsent Letter Festival. Residents deliver all letters they never sentâdrafts, apologies, confessionsâto the post office. Volunteers hang them on strings across the square. People wander, reading fragments of...
Reverse Archaeology
Instead of digging up the past, the Reverse Archaeology team buries it. Funded by a foundation obsessed with legacy, they create layers for future historians to discover. Maria, team lead, selects mundane artifacts: a grocery list, a child's drawing,...
The Day Silence Broke
At 10:02 a.m., sound stops. Air moves, mouths open, but nothing reaches ears. Car horns press silently. Birds flap in mute confusion. The world learns the texture of quiet instantly. Panic ripplesâalarms fail, emergency broadcasts are useless. People...
Factory of Borrowed Voices
The factory sits on the edge of town, smokestacks replaced with speakers. Inside, voices are bottled, rented, and returned. Customers borrow a booming baritone for a presentation or a lilting tenor for lullabies. The slogan: "Sound like your best sel...
Moonlight Tax
The Ministry of Luminous Resources announces a moonlight tax. Households must report how much moonlight they consume after midnight. Inspectors carry devices that measure glow on curtains. People laugh until fines arrive. Rooftop gardeners protest; p...
The Architect of Nightmares
A boutique service offers bespoke nightmares for clients who believe fear builds character. The Architect, known only as Vale, crafts dreams with precision: a chase through an endless library for procrastinators, a test with missing questions for per...
Immigrant Stars
Astronomers notice several stars dimming in unison. Headlines scream cosmic extinction. Then the stars move. Slowly, deliberately, they drift toward a darker patch of sky. Immigration, the scientists say. Celestial bodies leave crowded neighborhoods...
Museum of Almosts
The Museum of Almosts opens without fanfare in a converted warehouse. Inside, exhibits display choices not taken. A sign reads, "Touch nothing; imagine everything." In one room, a door labeled "Graduate School" stands ajar, showing a desk covered in...
Glacier Post Office
Near the melting edge of Calder Glacier, a research station doubles as a post office for letters frozen decades ago. As ice calves, envelopes surface, sealed and stamped from eras when handwriting mattered. Dr. Elsie Tran catalogs each letter and att...
The Clone Recall Notice
Citizens receive identical envelopes stamped with a seal: "Recall Notice: Report your clone for decommissioning." Panic spreads. Few admit to having clones, though everyone knows the program existed quietly for years. Mara's clone, Lia, has lived wit...
The Dinner Guest from Nowhere
During Thursday family dinner, a stranger knocks. She is muddy, wearing a badge with no language. "I was invited," she says calmly, though no one remembers inviting her. The family, polite to a fault, sets an extra plate. The guest eats ravenously, c...
Borrowed Fate Boutique
The boutique sits between a tattoo parlor and a bakery. Its sign reads "Fates for Rent." Inside, mannequins wear destinies like outfits: "Weekend Hero," "Midlife Reinvention," "Sudden Fame." Customers try them on for a fee, experiencing a day in that...
The Ink That Refuses to Dry
Writer Sam buys a rare fountain pen from an estate sale. The ink flows smooth but refuses to dry on the page. Words smear, sentences slide. Frustrated, Sam leaves a draft overnight. In the morning, the words have rearranged into a story Sam never int...
The Reversible Funeral
In Bracken, funerals are reversible once. Families may bring the deceased back for one day, reversing the ceremony. Caskets open, flowers stand upright, mourners walk backward into the hall. Time cooperates awkwardly but sincerely. When Mrs. Calloway...
Postal Code for Parallel Worlds
A glitch at the sorting facility assigns a new postal code that routes mail between parallel worlds. Letters meant for 1407 in this world reach 1407 elsewhere. At first, recipients are confused: postcards from unfamiliar cousins, bills in currencies...
The Sleep Tithe
City council passes a law: every citizen must tithe one dream per week to the State Dream Bank. Dreams fuel public works, powering streetlights and buses. People line up at kiosks, pressing foreheads to glass, exhaling dreams into vials. At first, it...
The Warranty on Reality
Reality comes with a warranty, apparently. After odd glitchesâstairs shortening, traffic lights swapping colorsâan insurance company sends adjuster Cole to investigate claims. He carries a clipboard and a scanner that beeps near anomalies. People fil...
The Librarian of Storms
At the coastal library, storms are checked out like books. Each storm is stored in a bottle on shelves labeled by intensity and mood: Drizzle of Regret, Thunder of Righteous Anger, Rain of Relief. Librarian Sol assigns storms with caution. Farmers bo...
The Rewound Wedding
After years of tension, Jordan and Priya are offered a rare service: a rewound wedding. A temporal specialist arrives with a device that plays days backward. Consent forms signed, guests reassemble. The process begins with the end of their marriage a...
The City that Dreamed of Forests
Heron City keeps waking to saplings sprouting from concrete. Blueprints on planners' desks are covered with leaf prints. Architects panic; designs mutate into parks. Scientists blame a fungal bloom. Poet Imani suggests the city itself is dreaming of...
Rental Conscience
A start-up offers consciences for rent. Need to fire someone without guilt? Rent a conscience that will nag you into kindness. Prices vary: deluxe models include moral philosophy references. Jin, a mid-level manager, rents a conscience for a week to...
The Daylight Heist
A crew of thieves plans the impossible: steal an afternoon. They hack calendars, hijack city clocks, deploy reflective balloons to confuse sundials. At 2 p.m. Tuesday, time hiccups. Watches show 2 p.m. again. An extra hour appears, unaccounted for. T...
The Statue that Listened
In the town square stands a statue of a woman holding a book. Legend says if you whisper a wish into her ear, she might grant it once. Most treat it as folklore. One winter, a child named Eli whispers, "I wish my brother would talk again." The next d...
The Accidental God App
A meditation app pushes an update with a bug. Users' whispered hopes begin manifesting in small ways: a lost sock appears, a parking spot opens. The company, CalmCompute, panics. Support tickets flood: "My app answered a prayer." Developers trace the...
The Archivist of Fading Languages
Eleni collected sounds the way others collected stamps. Her office at the Institute for Lingual Preservation was a tangle of reels, drives, and battered notebooks filled with phonetic scribbles. When a language dwindled to single digits of speakers, she was dispatched like a paramedic, arriving with...
The Neighborhood Time Bank
At first, the time bank was a chalkboard nailed to a fence. âDeposit an hour, withdraw an hour,â someone scrawled, half joke, half dare. Most neighbors chuckled and kept walking. Then Mr. Alvarez wrote, â+2 hours babysitting credit,â and Mrs. Chen withdrew one, scribbling, âNeed help watching Max Th...
The Island of Misdelivered Packages
Cargo ships avoid Parcel Reef. GPS glitches, compasses spin, and any package routed within a dozen nautical miles goes missing. Conspiracy forums buzz: pirates, sea monsters, corporate cover-up. The truth is stranger. The reef is an island made entirely of misdelivered packages, glued by salt and su...
The Clockmakerâs Rebellion
In the town of Bellmare, clocks never disagreed. Church bells, wristwatches, oven timersâthey all ticked in harmonious consensus, thanks to the Precision Guild. The Guild traced its roots to a clockmaker named Ansel who, centuries ago, built a master clock that whispered the correct time to every ot...
The Last Ferryman
The river between worlds had no name on any map, but everyone in the border town called it the Between. Boats crossed daily: paper barges of dreams, rafts of forgotten promises, ferries carrying souls who missed their connecting lives. Regulations were loose until the administration realized how man...
The Census of Shadows
The governmentâs latest attempt at order was a census of shadows. Officials claimed they needed accurate counts for infrastructure planning, psychological health metrics, and shadow-based taxation that would replace property taxes. Citizens laughed until forms arrived: âPlease stand in sunlight at n...
The Painter of Weather Maps
Miloâs meteorology degree hung crooked in his studio. He spent mornings at the national weather service, translating data into models. Afternoons he spent painting storm systems on canvas, swirling acrylic lows and highs with a palette knife. His colleagues teased him. âYou canât predict rain with p...
The Borrowed Island
Isla Verde was advertised as âYour Island for a Day.â Tourists could rent the whole placeâcabins, beaches, even the local bandâfor 24 hours. The government leased it to pay debts. Locals were promised jobs. At first, it seemed harmless. Couples held private weddings. Writers booked silence. Influenc...
The Proxy Wedding
In a seaside town bound by old laws, marriages required two witnesses, a blessing from the tide, and, bizarrely, consent from the ancestral registry. The registry was a ledger kept by a council of elders who believed lineage mattered more than love. When Aiko and Rafi eloped without approval, the re...
The Memory Locksmith
Nico fixed locks because he liked boundaries that clicked. His van read âLocksmith & Keys,â but under that, in smaller letters, âDiscreet Memory Services.â The latter was not advertised; it spread by whispers. Nico had a gift: he could unlock memories people had sealed away. Trauma therapists called...
The Paper Bridge Treaty
Two towns, Eastwell and Westwell, were divided by a river and centuries of grudges. Their bridges had burned in wars, storms, and accidents. Each rebuild became a battle: whose engineers, whose materials, whose name. Trade suffered. People swam across at night, risking currents and fines. Children s...
The Atlas of Regrets
Naomiâs atlas wasnât bound in leather or stored on a shelf. It lived on her kitchen table, pages spread, coffee-stained, annotated with pencil and tears. Each map charted a regret: cities she never moved to, careers she declined, people she let go. She drew them like transit maps, lines of possibili...
The Mechanical Orchard
On the outskirts of town, beyond the last Wi-Fi signal, grew an orchard of metal trees. Their trunks were copper, their leaves thin sheets of polished steel that chimed in the wind. Fruits were gears, acorns of aluminum, ripe when they clicked in sequence. Children dared each other to sneak in. Adul...
The Train That Runs on Stories
The 3:17 from Platform Nine didnât burn diesel or draw electric current. It ran on narrative. Its engine was a brass cylinder filled with microphones and ink. Passengers paid fare by telling stories into the conductorâs hat. Tales fueled the boiler, turning plot into steam. When the train started, t...
The Conductorâs Last Symphony
Maestro Elena Vargas stood on a podium older than her first violin. She had conducted orchestras across continents, wielded batons like wands, sculpted sound with flicks of wrist. Her fame rested on precision and passion. Now, in her seventies, her hands shook. She announced her final concert. Ticke...
The Shelter for Retired Superstitions
On Elm Street, between a bookstore and a nail salon, stood a narrow building with a peeling sign: âHome for Retired Superstitions.â Most people passed without noticing. Those who entered often did so on a dare or because they saw the black cat in the window and felt oddly welcomed. Inside, the air s...
The Auction of Quiet
The first auction was held in a converted church. Bidders sat on pews, paddles in hand. Onstage, nothing stood but a microphone and a glass jar. The auctioneer cleared his throat. âLot one: thirty seconds of pure quiet, recorded in a cave in Norway. Bidding starts at $100.â Paddles shot up. The pric...
The Lighthouse in the Desert
They said the desert had no need for a lighthouse. There was no sea, no ships, only dunes shifting like tides of sand. Yet there it stood: a white tower on a dune ridge, its beacon sweeping over emptiness. It had been built by a collective of wanderers decades ago, funded by donations and stubbornne...
The Insurance Against Miracles
Miracles, like electronics, sometimes failed. A prayer for rain yielded frogs. A statue wept oil instead of tears. To protect believers and practitioners, the Mutual Assurance of Miraculous Events (MAME) offered policies. Pay a premium, file a claim if your miracle misfired. Adjusters would investig...
The Rotating House
The house on Cedar Street spun slowly, one degree every ten minutes, completing a rotation every two and a half days. Its owner, Lina, inherited it from her grandfather, an engineer with a flair for whimsy. He had installed the rotating foundation so that every room would eventually face the sunrise...
The Archivistâs Duel
Two archivists, two philosophies, one archive. The National Repository of Everything Kept Too Long was a sprawling labyrinth of shelves containing everything from obsolete tech manuals to centuries-old grocery lists. At its heart worked Imani and Lukas. Imani believed in abundance: keep all, because...
The Glitch in the Garden
The municipal botanical garden prided itself on biodiversity and smart automation. Sensors regulated humidity, drones pollinated rare orchids, an AI named Daisy optimized water use. Visitors loved the blend of nature and tech. Then the glitch appeared. A patch of tulips flickered between colors like...
The Posthumous Travel Agency
Horizon Beyond Travel had a niche: vacations for the deceased. It catered to families who wanted loved onesâ ashes scattered in meaningful places, to wills that specified posthumous road trips, to cultures that believed spirits appreciated a good itinerary. Their brochures were tasteful: sunsets, mo...
The City of Borrowed Faces
In the city of Mirage, you could borrow a face like you borrowed a library book. The Face Bureau kept an archive of expressions, visages, and bone structures, licensed by those willing to lend their likeness for empathyâs sake. People borrowed faces for job interviews to overcome bias, for theater p...
The Candle Factory Strike
The candle factory on Maple Lane had operated since the 1800s, pouring wax into molds, wicks cut by hand, scents drifting downwind. It supplied churches, birthdays, blackout kits. Its workers were proud of their craft. Then, one autumn, candles refused to burn for lies. It started with a politicianâ...
The Librarian of First Sentences
The Library of Beginnings occupied a single, long room lined with narrow drawers. Each drawer contained cards, each card bearing a first sentence from a story, novel, speech, or diary that had never been finished or had gone missing. The librarian, Ana, guarded them. People visited when they were st...
The Courier Between Heartbeats
Time enforcement was a niche job. Yara was a courier licensed to operate between heartbeats, delivering messages through slivers of paused time. It was illegal to alter events, but messages could be passedâmicrosecond memos slipped into pockets, whispers frozen in air, notes left on falling raindrop...
The Mirror Accord
Mirrors always reflected, rarely negotiated. Then one cracked, and all mirrors spoke. It started in an antique shop. A customer dropped a mirror; instead of shattering, it fractured and said, âOuch.â The shopkeeper fainted. News spread. Mirrors everywhere demanded respect. They refused to reflect th...
The Tide Accountant
Reema inherited the tide ledger and the tall stool on the pier. Every evening, she sat, pen poised, recording grains of sand taken by the sea and grains returned. Her mother had done it; her grandmother had started it, insisting the sea respected accounting. People chuckled. Reema knew numbers sooth...
Orchestra of One Second
Aya composed symphonies from single seconds captured across time: a monkâs chant, a rocket launch, a childâs laugh, a subway screech. She stitched them into movements, making history audible in minutes. Audiences cried at the collision of eras. Aya was missing one perfect second to complete her late...
The City that Dreamed of Forests
Heron City woke to saplings sprouting from concrete. Blueprints on plannersâ desks were covered in leaf prints. Architects blamed vandals; poets blamed the city itself. Imani, a poet and urban gardener, proposed listening. She organized a sleep-in at the plaza. Hundreds lay on pavement, dreaming. Th...
Rental Conscience
The start-up ConscienceCo offered morality on demand. For a fee, you could rent a conscienceâa voice in your ear nagging you toward ethics. Models varied: âClassic Guilt,â âPractical Kant,â âEmpathizer.â Jin, a mid-level manager, rented one to get through layoffs without feeling like a monster. The...
The Daylight Heist
A crew of thieves planned the impossible: steal an afternoon. They hacked calendars, hijacked city clocks, and launched reflective balloons to confuse sundials. At 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, time hiccupped. Watches showed 2 p.m. again. An extra hour appeared, untethered. The crew aimed to sell itâone hour...
The Statue that Listened
In the town square stood a bronze statue of a woman holding a book. Legend said if you whispered a wish into her ear, she might grant it once. Most treated it as folklore. One winter, a child named Eli whispered, âI wish my brother would talk again.â The next day, his brother spoke his first words i...
The Accidental God App
CalmComputeâs meditation app pushed an update with a bug: whispered hopes began manifesting. Lost socks reappeared, parking spots opened. Support tickets flooded in: âMy app answered a prayer.â The company panicked. Developers traced the glitch to a misrouted server farm interpreting intent as tasks...
Shadow Adoption Agency
Behind the old cinema, stray shadows gathered, detached from owners by bright hospital lights, careless deals, or simple neglect. The city, tired of odd flickers and complaint calls about âunauthorized silhouettes,â opened a Shadow Adoption Agency. Its front door was hard to find; you had to stand b...
The Painter of Laws
In the republic of Varo, no law took effect until it was painted. This tradition began after a revolution when citizens demanded to see legislation in a form everyone could understand. A painter, Alis, was appointed as interpreter. Decades later, the role persisted. Laws arrived as dry text; the Pai...