Neon Lights and Dusty Trails
These entries are distinct because they are unfinished tales, segments of action and dialogue that stop abruptly. They act as windows into complex worlds—some futuristic, some historical—without guiding the reader to the exit. This format prioritizes the immediate tension of the scene, leaving the broader context and ultimate conclusion to the reader’s imagination.
As an initiative in applied artificial intelligence research, this project explores the intersection of human creativity and digital innovation. It demonstrates how digital tools can act as partners in the writing process, facilitating new approaches to storytelling and scriptwriting while advancing digital literacy.
The collection includes Sci-Fi, Noir Fantasy, and Western Style Boys Love, blending genre tropes in unexpected ways. Authors Jamie F. Bell and Leaf Richards contributed their voices to this diverse array of scenes.
You are encouraged to read these fragments and continue the thread. Use the established tone and character beats to formulate your own ending to the story.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
Merging the grit of noir fantasy with the speculative nature of sci-fi and post-apocalyptic survival, this content highlights the bold fusion of genres like Boys Love (BL) and dark comedy. As we explore these cinematic and historical fiction elements, our goal is to revolutionize the publishing industry. We strive to improve digital literacy by integrating creative technology into our workflow, producing short stories via AI-assisted narrative that challenge conventions and engage readers deeply.
What the Archive Forgets
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Cinematic | Genre: Sci-Fi
Michael’s world was a white room. White walls, white desk, white terminal. The only colour came from the screen, where he spent his days approving the application of black. He was a Redactor. A human failsafe in the great, silent work of The Curator, the AI tasked with sanitizing history for the sake of a fragile peace. His job was to provide the final, human touch to the act of forgetting.
Copper Haze Over Asphalt
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Dark Comedy | Genre: Western Style Boys Love
The campus, normally a vibrant hub, felt muted under the perpetual autumn drizzle. Leaves, slick with rain, plastered themselves to the pavement, forming grotesque mosaics that reflected the city’s neon pulse. An electric hum, a low thrum beneath the concrete, seemed to vibrate through the soles of Wally’s well-worn boots, a constant reminder that this was not home, not really, not ever in the way a spruce forest hummed with wind, or snow muffled sound into a perfect, vast silence.
Silver-Frost Burden
Author: Leaf Richards | Category: Historical Fiction | Genre: Boys Love (BL)
The world was a study in whites and greys, a canvas of unbroken snow stretching into the blurred horizon of a Northwestern Ontario winter. The air, sharp and unyielding, promised no warmth, only the ceaseless, gnawing cold. Under a sky the colour of tarnished pewter, two figures moved with deliberate, heavy steps, small dark smudges against the overwhelming expanse of the frozen landscape, their breath pluming in frosty bursts that vanished almost instantly.
Grease Trap Prophecies
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Romance | Genre: Noir Fantasy
Judy knew the signs. A tremor in the handle of the percolator, a specific bitterness in the aroma of the grind, a shimmer on the surface of the black coffee that wasn’t just a reflection of the greasy fluorescent lights. The pot was ready. Not for serving, not for the truckers and the night owls. It was ready for a Reading. And she wished, for the thousandth time, that she’d just learned how to make fancy latte art like a normal barista.
The Bloom
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Post-Apocalyptic Survival | Genre: Noir
The city, once a bustling metropolis, now lay entombed in a relentless winter, its skeletal structures draped in a shroud of pristine, unforgiving snow. A biting wind, sharp as a whetted blade, scoured the desolate avenues, carrying with it the faint, metallic tang of decay and the omnipresent, shuffling whisper of the world’s undone. It was a landscape of breathtaking, albeit morbid, beauty, where every frosted lamppost and shattered windowpane sang a melancholic hymn of what was lost.
About the Project
By design, these stories have no beginning and no end. Many stories are fictional, but many others are not. They are snapshots from worlds that never fully exist, inviting you to imagine what comes before and what happens next. We had fun exploring this project, and hope you will too.
The Unfinished Tales and Short Stories collection is part of an experimental, creative arts and research program by The Arts Incubator Winnipeg and the Art Borups Corners collectives. Each chapter is an interdisciplinary arts and narrative storytelling experiment focused on two key areas: AI-Assisted Scriptwriting, where researchers explore using AI to generate story ideas, plot structures, and alternative story arcs to enhance creative development; and Talent Development and Training, where the project studies the necessary skills for creative professionals to manage AI and immersive technologies in production, helping to inform future training curricula. The project was made possible with funding and support from the Ontario Arts Council Multi and Inter-Arts Projects program and the Government of Ontario. We thank them for supporting the arts, digital transformation research and innovation in Ontario.
About the Author
