Stories
14 stories across four universes. Read to orient — then enter the contest.
Stockton Chronicles
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Caduceus City
The protocols that keep a biotech campus running perfectly are also what make a death so easy to hide.
Stockton Chronicles
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The Caucus
A young delegate at a liquid democracy forum learns the rules were written by people who already knew how to bend them.
Stockton Chronicles
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Joan Henry vs the Algorithm
A narrative designer bets her livelihood on the one thing she's sure an algorithm can't replicate.
Trainverse
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The Overloaded Train
To see what the surveillance system refuses to show, a train attendant learns he first has to make himself invisible.
Trainverse
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The Headless Empire
The CEO who built an unkillable financial system has vanished — leaving his assistant to reckon with a machine that runs perfectly without him.
Trainverse
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Signals in the Margins
Someone has replaced years of the train's security archive with soup recipes. The detective investigating finds the recipes are the point.
Legends & Ledgers
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All You Can Do Here Is Leave
A family's letters home from a village that seems almost perfect — read in the order they arrive.
Legends & Ledgers
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T.R.O.(L.L.)
A border guard who sees everything and reports almost nothing becomes, without meaning to, a monument.
Zoothesia · Ch. 1
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Perception Must Preserve
A world that filters what everyone sees raises one question no one has answered: who controls the filter?
Zoothesia · Ch. 2
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Would You Stop Following Me If I
When AR overlays let your ex-boyfriend see only what he wants to see, becoming monstrous isn't enough to be left alone.
Zoothesia · Ch. 3
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The Predation Circuit
On his eighteenth birthday, a young man wakes to an empty city and learns the surveillance that isolated him left one gap.
Zoothesia · Ch. 4
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Day Traitor
A trader who profits from reading the market's invisible patterns begins to suspect he is one of them.
Zoothesia · Ch. 5
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Missing Not at Random
A teenager's school report about her missing brother becomes an investigation — the protocol that erased him didn't account for her.
Zoothesia · Ch. 6
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Minor Differences Repeating Forever
Karina spots her exact double leaving a clinic. The fractal has already been running longer than she has.