Echoes of Intrigue and Insight
Presented here are short stories as story fragments, each like a single, significant frame from a film reel, or a page torn from a deeply immersive book. They invite your mind to fill in the surrounding context, to imagine the full arc of the characters and their circumstances. This format encourages a deeper, more personal engagement with each piece.
This project serves as an experiment at the intersection of human creativity and artificial intelligence. It aims to demonstrate how digital tools can act as a collaborator in the writing process, shaping new forms of storytelling and fostering digital literacy. The focus is on the symbiotic relationship between human and technological input.
This collection brings together the tension of Crime Thriller, the hidden worlds of Corporate Espionage Thriller, the internal conflicts of Psychological Drama, and the sharp observations of Satire. Authors Jamie F. Bell and Leaf Richards offer their distinctive literary contributions to this thought-provoking array of unfinished tales.
We encourage you to engage with these tales, not just as a reader, but as an active participant. Allow your imagination to construct the complete narrative, transforming these compelling fragments into fully realized experiences.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
Immerse yourself in thought-provoking short stories covering Crime Thriller, Corporate Espionage, and Psychological Drama, featuring Domestic Thriller and Satire categories. Our mission is to enhance digital literacy through AI-assisted narrative, utilizing creative technology to redefine publishing and explore the future of digital storytelling.
The Macaw Repeats the Sum
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Domestic Thriller | Genre: Crime Thriller
Arthur liked his work. He enjoyed the quiet ritual of it, the methodical transformation of chaos into order. He was a cleaner. A specialist. Tonight’s job was a ‘level three spillage’ in a 24-hour convenience store just off the M4. He entered through the back, the manager having been paid handsomely to close for ’emergency plumbing issues.’ The ‘plumbing issue’ was currently being arranged in neat, black bags in the walk-in freezer. Arthur’s job was to erase the process.
A Hostile Taxonomy of Pigeons
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Psychological Drama | Genre: Corporate Espionage Thriller
The first sign that this was not going to be a normal Tuesday was the rhythmic pecking sound. It wasn’t the familiar tap of a colleague’s keyboard or the rattle of the ancient air conditioning unit. It was a sharp, insistent, organic sound coming from the server room’s external ventilation shaft. I was in the middle of a complex data migration, a delicate process that felt like performing brain surgery on a spreadsheet, and the noise was fraying the last of my nerves.
A Bitter Ascent Through Ice
Author: Leaf Richards | Category: Romance | Genre: Psychological Drama
The city, once a vibrant organism of steel and glass, lay frozen, its arteries choked with ice and a silence more profound than any graveyard. What remained of the pavement was a treacherous mosaic of black ice and crumbled concrete, dusted with fine, powdery snow that settled into every crevice like powdered bone. The air itself seemed to crackle, sharp and metallic, tasting of cold sweat and something vaguely akin to burning copper, the ghost of a thousand shorted circuits.
Salt-Stained Scores
Category: Psychological Thriller | Genre: Satire
Lena and Sam walk along a desolate, windswept beach at dusk, their conversation revolving around the dystopian ‘Collective Contribution Initiative’ and its oppressive social credit system, which dictates every aspect of their lives.
The Summer’s Respite
Author: Leaf Richards | Category: Western Style BL | Genre: Contemporary Fiction
The oppressive weight of a Central Alberta summer bore down on the endless fields, the air thick with the smell of dry grass and the distant, metallic tang of the oil rigs dotting the horizon. A cloud of fine, ochre dust hung in the still air, kicked up by nothing more than a faint breeze that offered no cooling relief. Under the unforgiving glare, two figures wrestled with a silent, imposing machine, their grunts and the clink of metal the only sounds against the vast, indifferent landscape.
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.
