Invitation to Co-Creation
This collection features short stories in an unfinished state, presenting narrative fragments that offer a glimpse into compelling situations without a full resolution. Each piece is like a page torn from a larger volume, inviting the reader’s imagination to construct the preceding and succeeding events, fostering a unique form of engagement.
This project explores the intersection of human creativity and artificial intelligence. It stands as an experiment in how digital tools can act as a partner in the writing process, shaping new forms of storytelling and enhancing digital literacy. The goal is to observe new possibilities when a creative concept is given a fresh, algorithmic perspective.
Today’s selection spans diverse genres including relatable Slice of Life, chilling Horror, intense Medical Drama, intricate Mystery, and stark Dystopian settings. These varied unfinished tales were created by Jamie F. Bell, Eva Suluk, and Leaf Richards.
We encourage you to become an active participant in these narratives. Explore the scenarios presented, ponder the characters’ motivations, and complete their journeys in your mind, becoming a co-creator in their unfolding.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
Explore a rich collection of short stories, from heartwarming Slice of Life and chilling Horror to poignant Medical Drama, intricate Mystery, dark Dystopian narratives, challenging Post-Apocalyptic Survival, thrilling Adventure, stark Gritty Realism, and imaginative Fantasy. Our project champions digital literacy by showcasing innovative publishing through creative technology, specifically exploring how AI-assisted narrative is transforming the future of digital publishing.
Static on the Shield
Category: Slice of Life | Genre: Slice of Life
A sweltering afternoon in a converted garage in Northwestern Ontario, where the hum of computer fans competes with the buzzing of cicadas outside.
Glacial Stain
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Post-Apocalyptic Survival | Genre: Horror
The world had long forgotten the colour of green. Now, it was a study in desaturated greys and bruised whites, an unending expanse of ice and hard-packed snow stretching to a sky the colour of old lead. The air itself felt like a physical weight, cold enough to ache in the bones, carrying with it the scent of frozen earth and distant, unburnt ash. Here, in the forgotten northern reaches, survival was less a fight and more a slow, constant negotiation with the elements, punctuated by sudden, brutal disruptions.
Between the Scaffolding and the Soul
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Adventure | Genre: Medical Drama
The hospital’s liminal hours, just before dawn, held a particular melancholy, a suspension between the exhausted night and the demanding day. It was in these moments that the weight of decisions, both made and deferred, settled heaviest, a quiet hum beneath the sterile glow of fluorescent fixtures and the distant, rhythmic beeps of machines.
The Threadbare Clue
Author: Eva Suluk | Category: Gritty Realism | Genre: Mystery
The alley, a damp vein in the city’s tired heart, exhaled the scent of mouldering leaves and stale refuse. A thin, anemic light from a distant lamp struggled against the encroaching autumn gloom, painting the slick cobblestones in shades of bruised indigo and murky ochre. It was a place of forgotten things, a narrow passage between brick walls that wore their age like scarred skin, each crack and crevice holding the city’s untold secrets.
Descent into the Conduit
Author: Leaf Richards | Category: Fantasy | Genre: Dystopian
The air itself was a memory, a ghost of warmth clinging to the outer layers of Oswald’s coveralls. Here, deep beneath the Conglomerate’s lowest accessible levels, the cold bit with a ferocity that defied the official temperature readings of the upper sectors. It was an ancient cold, born of leaking pipes and long-dead heat exchangers, a perpetual winter that had seeped into the very bones of the infrastructure. The metallic tang of decay, thick with the scent of stagnant water and ozone’s less cliché cousin – burning copper – clung to everything, a constant reminder of the slow, inevitable entropy at work.
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 an experimental, creative research project by The Arts Incubator Winnipeg and the Art Borups Corners Storytelling clubs. Each chapter is a unique interdisciplinary arts and narrative storytelling experiment, born from a collaboration between artists and applied AI researchers, designed to explore the boundaries of creative writing, automation, and storytelling. 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.
