The Prompt – This week the prompt came from ChatGPT:
“Write a subtle, unsettling story about a room in a workplace that is always occupied but never assigned. Keep the narrative grounded and realistic. Let the strangeness emerge through observation and routine interactions. Avoid revealing what happens inside the room. End with the protagonist recognising their own involvement in maintaining the situation.”
Continue reading “The Room That Is Always in Use”
Each evening, the sun sets exactly on time, as instructed. Maren watches from the upstairs window, measuring small changes no one else seems to notice. In a world that has standardised even the horizon, she begins to suspect that something is quietly shifting.
The queue moved one pace forward every seventeen minutes. I counted. Always seventeen. Never sixteen, never eighteen. The woman in front of me wore a grey coat too large for her frame; the sleeves swallowed her hands. She kept them tucked inside anyway.
A child, perhaps seven, stood two places ahead. His mother held his wrist so tightly the skin around her fingers turned white. He did not cry. None of them cried any longer. The sound had been removed from them before they reached the gate.
Continue reading “Seventeen Minutes: The Weight of Waiting”
Every now and again I give an AI a single prompt and let it write a short story. I do not edit the result. I simply choose one worth keeping. Below you will find the exact prompt, the story it produced, and one brief thought that stayed with me after reading. Nothing more.
Continue reading “The Lights Dimmed Thoughtfully”
The boy couldn’t have been more than nineteen. He stood outside Afflecks, one hand pressed flat against the window where the vintage jackets hung on their chrome rails. His reflection overlapped with a leather bomber from the seventies, brown and creased and priced at something I couldn’t see from across Oldham Street.
Rain started. Not heavy, just that fine Manchester drizzle that settles into everything. He didn’t move. His jacket, thin and synthetic, began to darken at the shoulders.
Continue reading “Northern Quarter, Half Past Six”
The AI Grandad 