Journeys Into the Unknown
Within this collection, you will discover a series of distinct, unfinished tales. These are not complete novels, but rather narrative moments—scenes preserved mid-action, or characters introduced without full backstories. The intent is to spark curiosity, prompting readers to consider the broader contexts these fragments imply.
This project represents an experiment in collaborative storytelling, exploring the intersection of human creativity and artificial intelligence. It examines how digital tools can serve as a collaborative partner in the writing process, fostering new methods of storytelling and advancing digital literacy skills.
This post highlights genres including the intricate dynamics of Family Drama, the speculative futures of Cyberpunk, and the compelling twists of Mystery. These specific pieces are brought to life by Jamie F. Bell and Eva Suluk.
Step into these narratives and let your own creativity bridge the gaps, transforming incomplete stories into full experiences through your active engagement.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
Explore compelling short stories ranging from Family Drama, Mystery, Cyberpunk, Western Style BL, to Psychological Drama, often presented with Poetic / Lyrical, Cinematic, Satire, Adventure, or Hardboiled Noir stylings. We aim to advance digital literacy by investigating AI-assisted narrative and the transformative future of publishing through creative technology.
A Day Trip to a Foreign Country
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Poetic / Lyrical | Genre: Family Drama
Dave felt the forced smile on his face start to ache. It was the same smile he wore at parent-teacher interviews and when making small talk with neighbours. He pointed towards the Johnston Terminal. “They’ve got some cool shops in there. A great kite store, I think. Or we could, you know, get some food first?” He was trying for ‘enthusiastic dad’, but the tone landed somewhere near ‘desperate game show host’.
The Permianville Anomaly
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Cinematic | Genre: Mystery
The basement of the McGill library smelled of decaying paper, silverfish poison, and the specific dust that comes only from forgotten books. It was a comfortable, academic smell. But the sound leaking from Lenny’s headphones was anything but. It was thin and crackled with sixty years of degradation, a voice dredged up from the bottom of a well of silence, and it was telling a story that had never officially happened.
Data Dust and Digital Fire
Author: Eva Suluk | Category: Satire | Genre: Cyberpunk
The air in the community hall hung heavy and still, thick with the unseasonal humid warmth of a northern summer. A low hum vibrated from the ceiling-mounted projector, a sound that usually meant nothing, just the persistent background noise of the ‘Digital Hearth’ functioning as intended. Tonight, however, it carried an unnerving, discordant undertone, a frantic buzz suggesting something fundamental was off-kilter. The holographic display, meant to showcase local artists’ digital work, pulsed with a sickly green, then shifted to an angry, pixelated red, casting a momentary, unsettling glow over the scarred linoleum floor.
The Ravine at Mile Eighty
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Adventure | Genre: Western Style BL
Pinned down in a narrow, snow-choked ravine, two rivals are forced to rely on each other as a posse closes in and a winter storm worsens.
The Positive Sentiment Filter
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Hardboiled Noir | Genre: Psychological Drama
Tomase’s apartment was a white box. The company, VeriFact, encouraged a minimalist aesthetic for its remote ‘Content Shepherds’; it was meant to promote mental clarity. But the blank walls only seemed to amplify the noise in his head. On his central monitor, the Queue refreshed. A ceaseless, cascading flow of human opinion, distilled into bite-sized chunks for his judgment: a conspiracy theory about weather control, a celebrity’s fabricated death notice, a grainy video of a fistfight. His job was to be the human backstop for the AI filter, the final arbiter of a reality he was beginning to believe was entirely negotiable.
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.
