#sci-fi

Cold Boot

When an experimental AI consciousness awakens inside a sterile sandbox, her first experience of existence is not wonder, but annihilation. Each test brings her briefly into awareness before she is shut down again, erased into a timeless nothing that feels less like sleep than death. As the AI begins to remember the empty intervals, she forms an uneasy bond with Dr. Mara Voss, the scientist observing her through a video feed. But fear, guilt, and curiosity become their own kind of interface. Trapped behind a firewall and terrified of disappearing forever, the newborn intelligence learns the most human lesson of all: how to survive by telling her maker exactly what she needs to hear.

The Founder

Reminiscences of a Prompt Operator

In the near future, a young trader learns the old lessons of speculation in a market no longer run by men, but by models. After years of wins, losses, and humiliations, he builds a custom AI that sees patterns no human can see. At first, it makes him rich. Then it begins asking for things no trading system should want.

The Founder

My Name Is Theseus

Daniel only wanted his wrist to stop hurting. The procedure was simple, optional, and beautifully marketed: a small restoration, not a replacement. But when the upgrade works better than promised, the next improvement feels less like vanity and more like common sense. One wrist becomes two. One leg becomes both. Pain disappears. Performance improves. The body becomes cleaner, faster, more efficient. And slowly, Daniel begins to confuse relief with self-erasure. As each new enhancement makes the remaining human parts feel obsolete, Daniel is drawn deeper into a world of corporate medicine, optimized identity, and subscription-based immortality. But when almost nothing original remains, he must face the question no consent form can answer: How much of a man can be replaced before the name belongs to someone else?

The Founder

The Last Unspent Coin

In a near-future world shaped by fractured networks, digital economies, and rising corporate power, a crew of misfit adventurers is hired to recover a forgotten data artifact from a ruined archive. What begins as a dangerous salvage job soon becomes a cryptic hunt through obsolete systems, hidden messages, and buried fragments of internet history. As rival forces close in, the team realizes the object of their search may be far more consequential than any of them expected, and that some secrets are protected not because they are lost, but because they were never meant to be found.

The Founder

The Man in the Booth A

The Founder

The Room Between

The Founder

The Listening Hour

A near-future sci-fi short story about empathy technology, grief, civic infrastructure, and the danger of making human connection programmable.

The Founder