Dark, dystopian short stories added every month for your reading pleasure. Only minutes to read, and packed with technological marvels and disturbing, stark futurescapes.
Food for Thought
“Lights out!” said Dad, “The AI is about to start feeding.” It was always the same: just when I was enjoying the augmented reality experience of the high-energy plumbing teacher, through my video goggles, the countdown toward the blackout began. The AI, Big Dog, as it had renamed itself, required its populations to limit their…
Time Storm at Tesco
Clean up on aisle five I was shopping, feeling the residual chill in the freezer aisle at the local Tesco supermarket, when a national alert blurted out on everyone’s mobile phone at once. The unmistakable, blunt synchronised chimes rippled through the cavernous, white-walled consumer warehouse, echoing through the open space. An elderly lady nearby fumbled…
The Keeper
Light is death ‘Don’t go toward the light.’ That was why lighthouses were built. The light was death on rocks; the light was the signal for the hidden trap just beneath the black waves. But there were no more waves. There was no more sea. It had grown hotter every year for a hundred years.…
Invasive Species
The scene of the incident was nothing I hadn’t seen dozens of times before, but I never lost that spike of adrenaline as I climbed out of my heavily branded eCar and sauntered to the police tape hooked up around the drive of the suburban home. Two uniformed officers were loitering awkwardly to dissuade visitors…
Keeping Company
A pool of water from the lashing rain grew outside the long, shallow factory window, a mirror on the concrete. The pool reflected imposing floodlights, as the heavy drops exploded into expanding circles. The edges of the gathering water nudged out tentatively, reaching, like life wanting more. It was as if nature was amassing for…
New Day
Graveyards of idiots I reached a moment of pure honesty on the morning of the eve of my fifty-fifth birthday. I could hear that infernal song by The Smiths, Come Armageddon droning from somewhere in the house, and it triggered me. I dared to think out of the mental sheep pen I had put myself…
Back to the Soil
I had damaged myself. The blood was caked about my hand and wrist and had made the cuff of my maroon cotton shirt a moist mat of dark material. I lifted the tissue paper I had grabbed at the time of the incident, and it refused to detach, stuck to the sliced, loose skin on…
Perfect Balance
Clara had a neck scarf she treasured. It was dyed a blend of swirling blue and white, like the colours of a real sky, and remained beautiful despite being five generations old. It had been with her Earth ancestor on the launch, so it was a talisman to Clara, a sacred object. The edges were…
The Algorithm
“How do you defeat something?” “Defeat what?” “Anything?” Mannings had ushered him away to a basement, just a few minutes after he had collected his coffee and booted up his hard drive. The way he hurried him out of his work cubical seemed rude, and was publicly awkward. The room he was pushed into was…
Unnatural
Watching your world degrade is an experience unlike any other. It’s like watching your bed begin to burn while you are trying to sleep in it. In a way, it’s a nuisance because you want to sleep and you are tired, but it’s obvious you are about to die unless you choose to do something…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Dystopian Days 