Echoes of Unfinished Worlds
This collection brings together short stories presented as incomplete narratives, each a window into a scene in progress or a story paused mid-sentence. They provoke curiosity, inviting the reader to imagine the full scope of events, both past and future, and to participate in the narrative’s completion.
This project is an experimental program at the intersection of human creativity, interdisciplinary arts, and applied artificial intelligence research. It investigates how digital tools can serve as a partner in the writing process, fostering new forms of storytelling, scriptwriting, and improving digital literacy skills and workflows.
The tales featured today, from authors Jamie F. Bell, Tony Eetak, and Leaf Richards, range across genres such as the methodical investigations of Crime Procedural, the everyday observations of Slice of Life, the gritty futures of Cyberpunk Dystopia, the sharp commentary of Satire, and the challenging realities of Dystopian fiction.
Engage with these stories by allowing your own imagination to bridge the gaps. Each tale is an open invitation for you to contribute to its meaning and bring it to a personal, satisfying conclusion.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
Scar Tissue on the Tundra
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Crime Procedural | Genre: Crime Procedural
The air bit, sharp and clean, carrying the scent of damp earth and dying leaves. A thin crust of frost glittered on the sparse tundra grasses, giving way with a soft crackle under the weight of my boots. The sky, a bruised purple-grey, pressed low, threatening a cold rain or an early snow. It was a day for hunkering down, not for picking through the exposed guts of a landscape. But some things wouldn’t wait for warmer weather, or for permission.
The Rec Hall Basement
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Domestic Thriller | Genre: Slice of Life
A group of youth and community members are at a kitchen table, excitedly brainstorming plans to convert an old, disused recreation hall basement into an arts and culture space, while an underlying sense of mystery and unease slowly builds for one of them.
Northern Protocols
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Cyberpunk Dystopia | Genre: Cyberpunk Dystopia
The reluctant, sluggish thaw of a Northern spring clutched at the city’s periphery, its tendrils of grey slush clinging to the cracked pavements and the bases of skeletal, frost-nipped birches. A perpetual, muted light, filtered through layers of industrial haze and low cloud, softened the sharp angles of the distant Arcology, making it appear less a monument to control and more a smudged charcoal drawing against the pallid sky. Inside the collective’s workshop, a repurposed maintenance bay within a forgotten utility complex, the chill still bit at exposed skin, a constant reminder of the season’s hesitant promise and the pervasive reach of the Authority’s distant hum.
The Biodegradable Blight
Author: Tony Eetak | Category: Romance | Genre: Satire
The morning had started, as most spring mornings did, with a deceptive promise of renewal. The air, though crisp with the lingering chill of winter’s grudges, carried the scent of wet earth and burgeoning hyacinths. A robin chirped, annoyingly optimistic, from a branch heavy with pink magnolia blossoms. But this was not to be a morning of quiet contemplation for Evelyn ‘Evy’ Holloway, nor for Andy Finch. Instead, the sky above their neighbourhood of tidy brick duplexes and meticulously tended window boxes, a sky usually reserved for the mundane flight paths of pigeons and the occasional jet contrail, was violently interrupted by a contraption of municipal folly.
The Cage Noise
Author: Leaf Richards | Category: Allegorical | Genre: Dystopian
The chill of the manufactured spring evening seeped into the city’s bones, clinging to the polished chromesteel facades and the scant, genetically engineered blossoms that studded the urban planters. A perpetual, muted glow, siphoned from the upper atmosphere, rendered the sky a perpetual twilight, never quite dark enough to hide, never bright enough to truly reveal. Tara, her breath a brief, wispy cloud, kept pace with Bernard, the rhythmic tap of their synthetic-soled boots on the immaculately paved promenade a solitary counterpoint to the city’s ubiquitous, almost imperceptible hum. This hum, a low thrumming resonance, was the city’s pulse, its promise, and its ever-present threat.
Storytelling and the Arts, Skills Development and Digital Transformation
AI-Assisted Storytelling and Scriptwriting: As part of our “Storytelling and the Arts” initiative, we are actively exploring AI’s role in creative development, using genres such as Satire, Slice of Life, Cyberpunk Dystopia, Crime Procedural, and Dystopian as prime examples. We are studying AI’s ability to navigate the complex social commentary of Satire, capture the subtle human moments in Slice of Life, construct immersive settings and thematic depth for Cyberpunk Dystopia and Dystopian narratives, and manage intricate plot structures and character interactions in Crime Procedural scripts. This research aims to understand how AI can assist in crafting compelling narratives and refining genre-specific challenges.
Talent Development and Training: Our project concurrently investigates the new competencies essential for creative professionals adapting to an AI-driven environment. The experience of developing chapters within Satire, Slice of Life, Cyberpunk Dystopia, Crime Procedural, and Dystopian through AI tools provides crucial insights into the evolving landscape of digital publishing and film production. This work underscores the importance of digital literacy, strategic AI tool management, and developing a critical eye for integrating AI outputs into a cohesive and original creative vision.
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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