Author: Mike

Hello, my name is Mike Jackson. If you have any comments about the post you have just read I'd love to read them.
A dimly lit office corridor with a frosted glass door marked “7” glowing with warm, shifting light. A woman stands at a distance holding files, facing the door, while the surrounding hallway remains shadowy and empty.
Posted in stories

The Room That Is Always in Use

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Nobody booked Room 7. That was the first thing Diane noticed when she took over the facilities spreadsheet from Paul, who had left without notice and without explanation, which itself nobody seemed to find strange.

The room sat between the stationery cupboard and the second-floor toilets. It had a number, a handle, a frosted panel through which light was always visible. Not the cold flicker of fluorescents. Something warmer. Something that occasionally shifted, very slightly, the way light shifts when a body moves through it.

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Posted in stories

The Wire Across the Sky

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The sun set at the same time every evening now.

Maren had read about it in the bulletin, the one slipped under the door each morning on grey paper that smelled faintly of something she couldn’t name. Atmospheric Regulation Phase Three. Sunset standardised to 20:10 across all coastal zones. Citizens are reminded that observation of the horizon between 20:00 and 20:30 is prohibited without prior authorisation. She observed it anyway, from the upstairs window, with the light off.

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Angry stick figure pointing — illustration for AI-generated dark flash fiction on The AI Grandad blog
Posted in stories

The Complaints Department

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Gerald had been pointing at things his entire life.

At school, he pointed at the boy who’d drawn on his exercise book. At work, he pointed at the colleague who’d taken credit for his quarterly report. At home, he pointed at the neighbours whose recycling bin was precisely four centimetres over the boundary line.

Gerald had a gift, you see. A talent honed over fifty-three years of careful observation and righteous fury. He could identify a problem, any problem, within seconds of entering a room. A crooked picture frame. An incorrectly apostrophised sign. A colleague breathing too loudly in an open-plan office. The finger never rested.

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A frail dying old man, emaciated face with sunken cheeks and deep wrinkles. Wearing a heavy, rusty cyberpunk neuro-helmet over his head with glowing red interface lights.
Posted in stories

Lost Memories: A Tale of Memory Extraction at Seventy-Three

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They told me it would be painless. They always tell you it will be painless.

I was seventy-three when they fitted the first interface. A volunteer, they called me. Pioneer. That word tasted sweet once. Now it sits in my throat like old copper wire. They needed someone whose mind had already softened at the edges, they said. Someone whose memories had grown loose, easy to pull free like teeth from rotting gum. The young ones held too tight. Their thoughts fought back. Mine, they said, would cooperate.

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After

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The appointment ran fourteen minutes over schedule. Sandra noted this on her way out, because noting things was easier than feeling them.

Outside, the Compliance Centre smelled of rain and exhaust. March in Manchester. She pulled her coat tighter and walked, because the form she’d signed said walking is encouraged as a mood-regulating activity and she was, above all else, a person who followed instructions now.

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