Epochs of Dread and Ancient Whispers
This collection presents short stories in an uncommon form: incomplete narrative fragments, moments captured mid-scene, or pages torn from a larger book. Each piece offers a glimpse into a world, inviting readers to engage their own imagination to consider what came before and what might follow.
This project is an experimental program at the intersection of human creativity, interdisciplinary arts, and applied artificial intelligence research. It explores how digital tools can act as a partner in the writing process, shaping new forms of storytelling, scriptwriting, and enhancing digital literacy skills and workflows.
This post features tales that range from the unsettling vastness of Cosmic Horror to the rich detail of Historical Fiction, also exploring Coming-of-Age, Satire, and Dark Comedy. Jamie F. Bell, Tony Eetak, and Eva Suluk present their contributions to this collection.
We invite you to explore these tales not just as a reader, but as a co-creator, completing the narratives within your own mind and shaping their ultimate meaning.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
The Shape of the Exhibit
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Colloquial / Conversational | Genre: Cosmic Horror
The air in Gallery Three felt too thin, tasting of ozone and wet plaster. Outside, a late January blizzard howled, but within, a different kind of storm raged around what was once ‘Iteration 7’. Light, sharp and wrong, pulsed from the centre, carving impossible shadows.
A Chill in the Old Hall
Author: Tony Eetak | Category: Supernatural Mystery | Genre: Historical Fiction
The wind, sharp with the scent of wet pine and distant woodsmoke, tore at the posters Evan had meticulously stapled to the community board. Red and gold maple leaves, brittle as old parchment, scuttled across the frosted ground. It was late October, and the grey light of afternoon had already begun its surrender to an early dusk, painting the sparse clapboard buildings of Oakhaven in shades of muted indigo. Inside the drafty, cavernous interior of the Oakhaven Community Hall, a handful of faces, etched with the seasons of the north, turned towards Evan, their expressions a blend of polite skepticism and weary resignation.
The Pristine Muck
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Satirical / Ironic | Genre: Coming-of-Age
Jesse, a cynical teenager, is halfway through a forced ‘character-building’ hike on the ‘Old Mill Heritage Trail,’ which he finds to be an over-manicured and ironically ‘authentic’ experience.
The Unscheduled Encounter
Author: Eva Suluk | Category: Romance | Genre: Satire
The air in the Harmonious Future Collective’s North Wing was thick with the scent of synthetic lemon and the faint, persistent hum of the ‘Wellness Optimisation Grid’. Outside, the summer night pressed in, a humid, heavy blanket over the meticulously manicured lawns. Inside, the corridors gleamed under an unnervingly consistent artificial light, designed, the brochures claimed, to promote ‘optimal mood regulation’. Maggie, however, found it merely oppressive, a constant reminder of the omnipresent surveillance. She was supposed to be in her ‘Personal Reflection Chamber’ by now, completing her ‘Daily Affective Recalibration’, but a strange flicker on her wrist-comm had drawn her here, to this quiet, rarely used stretch of hallway, where the ‘optimal mood regulation’ seemed to be malfunctioning, casting long, wavering shadows.
Petty Geysers of Grief
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Surreal / Absurdist | Genre: Dark Comedy
The protagonist is trapped in a public park during late autumn. The park is actively undergoing surreal distortions due to the manifestation of a cosmic, petty argument between two archetypal entities. The ground breathes, leaves float upwards, and objects liquify or twist. The protagonist is forced to mediate this bizarre conflict to escape.
Storytelling and the Arts, Skills Development and Digital Transformation
AI-Assisted Storytelling and Scriptwriting: Our research at the arts and technology incubator critically examines AI’s role in creative development, particularly through the lens of genres like Coming-of-Age, Historical Fiction, Satire, Dark Comedy, and Cosmic Horror. We are investigating how AI can assist in crafting nuanced character development for Coming-of-Age stories, ensure historical accuracy and world-building for historical fiction, sharpen the wit and irony of satire, balance the tonal complexities of dark comedy, and evoke profound unease inherent in cosmic horror narratives. This study explores AI’s capacity to address genre-specific storytelling challenges, from intricate plot construction to dialogue generation, thereby augmenting the overall scriptwriting and creative process.
Talent Development and Training: Simultaneously, our project focuses on identifying the evolving skills essential for creative professionals navigating the digital transformation of the arts. The development of narratives spanning these distinct genres illustrates the growing importance of digital literacy and the adept management of AI tools within contemporary digital publishing and film production workflows. By analyzing how creators utilize AI to bring these varied stories to life, we aim to delineate the necessary training and development pathways that will equip talent to effectively integrate AI into their creative practices, enhancing both artistic output and professional adaptability.
We’re excited to learn about these new technologies and how they can be applied to expand the boundaries of human storytelling. We encourage you to keep reading, keep imagining, and keep exploring the incredible potential that opens up when creativity meets technology.
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 interdisciplinary arts and narrative storytelling experiment. It is part of a creative arts and research program by The Arts Incubator Winnipeg and the Art Borups Corners collectives. This project focuses on two key areas: AI-Assisted Storytelling and Scriptwriting, exploring AI for generating ideas, plot structures, and alternative story arcs; and Talent Development and Training, studying the skills and training needs for creative professionals managing AI and immersive technologies to inform future training curricula. Funding and support were generously provided by the Ontario Arts Council Multi and Inter-Arts Projects program and the Government of Ontario. We thank them for supporting the arts, digital transformation, and applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) research for northern innovation in Ontario.
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