Stories tagged: journey
12 stories with this tag
Train to the Unwritten City
On Track Thirteen, a train without a schedule waits for passengers ready to step into somewhere that does not exist until they imagine it. The conductor wears no badge, only a pin that reads, "What do you want to see?" Nora boards with a notebook of...
Weather Custodians
The Barros family business is not in any phone book. They maintain the weather. Each dawn, they polish rainbows with microfiber cloths, oil hinges on windmills that steer gusts, and restock fog in sealed barrels. Their warehouse smells of ozone and d...
Memory Foreclosure
Lena works at Solvent Bank's most controversial division: Memory Recovery and Repossession. Clients who default on dream-backed loans sign away their most valuable memories. Lena's job is to retrieve them using a headset that lets her walk through so...
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...
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...
The Courier of Last Words
Jem works for a service that delivers last words from the dying to the living. Clients record messages, set conditions, pay fees. Jem travels with a battered satchel of envelopes and encrypted drives. She prefers handwritten notes; they feel honest....
Cloud Cartographers
Siblings Ana and Luis map cloud continents from their rooftop. They trace shapes as they drift, naming regions like Cotton Valley and Nimbus Ridge. Their hobby becomes vocation when a meteorologist publishes their maps online. Suddenly, people want f...
Shadow Adoption Agency
Stray shadows gather in the alley behind the old cinema, ownerless, flickering. The city opens a Shadow Adoption Agency to pair them with people who lost theirs to accidents, deals, or carelessness. Applicants fill forms: light exposure, personality,...
The Painter of Laws
In the republic of Varo, laws cannot take effect until the Painter renders them on canvas. Tradition began to ensure laws were visual and comprehensible. The current Painter, Alis, has grown weary of painting endless tax codes. When a new law arrives...
Orchestra of One Second
Composer Aya writes symphonies from single seconds captured throughout history: a monk's chant, a rocket launch, a child's laugh, a subway screech. She strings them into movements, time-traveling with sound. Audiences listen with headphones, experien...
The Apartment Between Floors
Between floors seven and eight of a downtown high-rise is an apartment not on any blueprint. The elevator stops there only if you press 7 and 8 simultaneously while humming. Tenants who discover it find a cozy space with mismatched furniture, a kettl...