Glimpses Into Untold Worlds: A Literary Experiment
Within this collection, readers will find incomplete narrative fragments, brief moments captured mid-scene. These are not full narratives, but rather glimpses, pages torn from larger, unseen books, inviting personal reflection on their origins and futures.
This project explores the interplay between human creativity and artificial intelligence. It aims to demonstrate how digital tools can support the writing process, fostering new methods of storytelling and improving digital literacy.
Today’s selection features Literary Fiction, Action-Adventure, Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian, Domestic Thriller, and Contemporary Fiction. These stories are shaped by the contributions of Leaf Richards and Jamie F. Bell.
Engage with these unfinished tales and allow your imagination to extend beyond the presented words, completing the narratives within your own thoughts.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
Explore compelling short stories encompassing Literary Fiction, Action-Adventure, Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian, and Domestic Thriller, alongside Contemporary Fiction, Crime Noir, and Steampunk Adventures, all delivered with Gritty Realism. Our project champions digital literacy in publishing, demonstrating how creative technology is instrumental in pioneering AI-assisted narrative and the evolving landscape of digital publishing.
A Slackening Current
Author: Leaf Richards | Category: Domestic Thriller | Genre: Literary Fiction
A biting spring wind whips off the churning river, tugging at Rory’s worn jacket. Beneath a sky the colour of bruised plums, she picks her way along the muddy bank, the damp chill seeping through her trainers. The air carries the faint, metallic scent of damp soil and something indefinably industrial from upstream. It is a walk she takes to clear her head, but today, the landscape feels less like a refuge and more like a stark, gritted mirror.
The Laptop Screen
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Crime Noir | Genre: Action-Adventure
The air conditioning in the old Exchange District building barely cut through the August humidity. Nathan, perched on a plastic chair in the back row, watched the projector flicker. Another ‘innovative methodology’ was being unveiled, another attempt to make good on promises the city would inevitably break. He was twenty, almost twenty-one, and already tired.
The Quiet Scourge
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Post-Apocalyptic Survival | Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian
Amidst the desolation of an autumn forest, still reeling from a nuclear waste repository accident, Art and Ben trudge through a landscape of decay and muted colours, each step a testament to their grim, daily survival. The air is thick with the scent of damp earth and a metallic tang, and every puddle, every gust of wind, is a potential vector for the invisible, silent poison that has permeated their world.
The Unwound Spring
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Steampunk Adventures | Genre: Domestic Thriller
The wind, a raw, indifferent blade, scoured the expanse of The Forks. Bev’s gloved fingers, thick with the cold, fumbled with the lens cap, her breath pluming white and immediate. The air smelled of damp wool and exhaust fumes, a sharp tang beneath the perpetual frost. She hunched against the biting prairie wind, her gaze fixed on the ornate, antiquated clock tower that presided over the confluence of the rivers, a strange, anachronistic sentinel in the urban sprawl. Her camera, a heavy, familiar weight, felt alien in hands that trembled, not just from the cold, but from something far colder within.
A Confluence of Fading Light
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Gritty Realism | Genre: Contemporary Fiction
The air, thick and unmoving, still held the day’s oppressive heat, even as the sky deepened to a bruised plum-purple where the sun had just sunk below the city line. A lingering orange stain smudged the horizon, a badly wiped brushstroke. Cassian dragged a boot through the gravel path, the sound a soft, gritty rasp that felt too loud in the sudden quiet of the park. It was too hot for late August, the kind of heavy, still heat that clung to your skin, making your shirt feel like a second, damp skin, even after the light had gone. The air smelled of cut grass, recently mown but now starting to ferment, and something else – decay, maybe, or just the dampness rising from the river that wound its lazy, indifferent way through the park’s shadowed heart.
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.
