Realities, Thrills, and Worlds Beyond
These short stories offer windows into diverse worlds, each piece a self-contained yet incomplete snapshot. They present characters, settings, and conflicts without full resolution, acting as brief narrative glimpses that challenge the reader to engage their interpretive skills. The stories invite contemplation of what lies both before and after the presented moment.
The project’s purpose centers on exploring the synergy between human creativity and digital innovation. It is an experiment demonstrating how advanced algorithms can assist in the generation of literary content, fostering new forms of engagement with storytelling and promoting digital literacy within the creative arts.
This selection features a broad spectrum of genres, from relatable Contemporary Fiction and tense Existential Thriller to dynamic Sports Fiction, mystical Urban Fantasy, and epic Fantasy. All these vivid unfinished tales are contributed by Jamie F. Bell, whose versatile writing shines through each one.
Step into these worlds and consider them open invitations. Your imagination is the crucial element needed to complete these narratives, making each reading a truly personal and creative act.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
Discover a diverse collection of short stories, ranging from Contemporary Fiction, Existential Thriller, Sports Fiction, Urban Fantasy, and Fantasy, to Action-Adventure, Time Travel Paradox, Comedy, Romance, and Superhero categories. This initiative furthers digital literacy by exploring AI-assisted narrative and innovative creative technology, envisioning the future of digital publishing.
A Cog in the Wind’s Machine
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Action-Adventure | Genre: Contemporary Fiction
The wind on this stretch of coast was not a force, it was a personality. It was a vicious, tireless thing that scoured the cliffs and tore at the foundations of Mandy’s cottage. To others, it was a menace. To Mandy, it was a collaborator. It was the engine for the strange, metallic forest she was growing at the edge of the world. Her sculptures, welded together from scavenged fishing trawler parts and shipwreck salvage, were designed to catch it, to argue with it, to turn its fury into a form of erratic, grinding grace.
Residue of a Former Occupant
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Time Travel Paradox | Genre: Existential Thriller
The first thing that registered was the pain. A dull, throbbing ache in his ribs, a sharp sting in his left knuckles. Julian groaned, rolling over. The sheets were cheap, polyester that felt slick and cold against his skin. This wasn’t his bed. This wasn’t his room. The ceiling was stained with a water bloom the shape of a lung, and the air tasted of stale smoke and old coffee. Panic, cold and immediate, seized him. He sat bolt upright, and the room spun.
The Puck’s Lament
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Comedy | Genre: Sports Fiction
The oppressive summer heat hung heavy in the stale air of the old university theatre. Dust motes danced in the single shaft of sunlight that pierced a grimy window high above, illuminating the peeling paint on the walls and the worn crimson velvet of the empty seats. On the bare stage, two young actors, Jeff and Laura, were locked in a silent struggle against the sheer, unadulterated badness of a script called ‘Slap Shot Dreams’. Their director, Coach Reese, a man whose passion for ‘the craft’ bordered on manic, watched from the front row, his knee bouncing a steady, unsettling rhythm against the armrest.
A Ten-Pin Invocation
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Romance | Genre: Urban Fantasy
Rona hated Lane 12. It was sticky. Not just with spilled beer and soda, but with something older, a lingering residue of bad luck and missed spares. But tonight, she didn’t have a choice. This was the lane assigned for the final match, and she knew her opponent, Denny, had chosen it for a reason. In the cacophony of crashing pins and cheap rock music, a different kind of game was being played, and the score was kept not in frames, but in favours owed to the house.
Where the Condensation Gathers
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Superhero | Genre: Fantasy
Linda believed in the truth of maps. They were her life’s work, the careful translation of chaotic reality into elegant, understandable lines. But the maps that appeared each morning on the large window of her coffee shop were different. They were not translations; they were truths unto themselves. Formed by the dance of morning condensation, the intricate swirls and rivers of moisture would resolve, for a few precious hours, into a perfect, impossible coastline. A land she had never seen on any chart. Today, a new mountain range had appeared in the south, jagged and formidable.
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.
