Echoes of Unwritten Endings
The stories presented here are not polished narratives wrapped in a neat bow, but rather incomplete glimpses into larger, unseen worlds. Think of them as pages torn from a book you found on a park bench, or a conversation overheard in a crowded cafe that cuts off just as the secret is revealed. These unfinished tales offer moments captured mid-scene, inviting the reader to step past the written word and inhabit the silence that follows.
This project represents an experimental program situated at the intersection of human creativity, interdisciplinary arts, and applied artificial intelligence research. It serves as a practical exploration of how digital tools can act as a partner in the writing process. By leveraging these technologies, we aim to shape new forms of storytelling and scriptwriting while enhancing digital literacy skills and workflows for modern creators.
Today’s selection offers a wide narrative range, moving from the grounded reality of Contemporary Fiction to the high-stakes tension of Legal Thrillers and the unsettling atmosphere of Horror. Leading this diverse assembly are authors Jamie F. Bell, Eva Suluk, and Leaf Richards. Their contributions provide the framework, but the resolution is deliberately absent.
We invite you to engage with these texts not merely as a passive observer, but as an active participant. Read the fragments, absorb the tension, and allow your own imagination to construct the bridge between what is written and what remains unknown.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
This project represents a new frontier in digital literacy and the evolution of publishing, utilizing creative technology to explore the potential of AI-assisted narratives. In this collection of short stories, we delve into the darker corners of imagination, ranging from grimdark fantasy and cosmic horror to tense legal thrillers and dystopian speculative fiction. By bridging traditional genre boundaries like science fiction and contemporary fiction, we aim to redefine how readers experience complex emotional landscapes in the modern digital age.
A Cardinal’s Stillness
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Grimdark Fantasy | Genre: Contemporary Fiction
The morning light, thin and starved, bled through the kitchen window, painting the cold linoleum in weak, grey stripes. Outside, a heavy snowfall had silenced the world, leaving behind a profound, almost oppressive stillness that pressed against the walls of Juniper’s small cabin. The air within was thick with the faint, metallic scent of an old, untended wood stove and the ghost of yesterday’s brewing coffee.
All Our Analogue Ghosts
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Science Fiction | Genre: Speculative Fiction
The cabin still held the faint, lingering scent of his father: pipe tobacco, damp earth, and something metallic like old circuitry. Philip sat before the settlement’s archive terminal, its thick glass screen humming with a soft green light. Outside, the perpetual drizzle of the Pacific Northwest coast pattered against the cedar shingles of the server house, a sound that was usually comforting. Tonight, it felt like a thousand tapping fingers, demanding an answer he didn’t have.
The Deepwood Yield
Author: Eva Suluk | Category: Cosmic Horror | Genre: Legal Thriller
A crisp autumn afternoon in the Deepwood Land Lab. The air hung still, carrying the scent of damp earth and dying leaves. A thin, grey light filtered through the skeletal canopy of birch and pine, casting long, wavering shadows across the narrow, winding path. Thomas Caldwell, his breath misting faintly, adjusted the collar of his tweed jacket, his gaze fixed on a particular, unnerving anomaly. The land, usually so generous, seemed to hold a secret in its quiet dormancy.
The Screaming Grey
Author: Leaf Richards | Category: Horror | Genre: Dystopian
The metallic tang of fear clung to the back of my throat, a familiar flavour that had taken root in my earliest memories. Sleep offered no escape, only a deeper, more abstract terror where the world was a pulsing grid and unseen machines watched with cold, unblinking eyes. Waking was just a shift in the nightmare, from the grey of dreams to the endless, biting grey of a winter that never truly ended, inside a bunker that felt less like shelter and more like a waiting room.
The Leaves
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Horror | Genre: Horror
The autumn air outside Arnold’s window hung heavy and damp, the last vestiges of daylight bleeding from a bruised sky. Inside, the quiet hum of the old house was broken only by the distant murmur of the television and the clink of ice in a forgotten glass. He sat, a man etched by time and solitude, observing the way the fading light played tricks on the browning leaves, a prelude to a chill that had nothing to do with the season.
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.
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