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Stories by Austen Tucker

Everything here used to be something else.

Stories about people who were told no, and what they built anyway.

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Moxie, an orange fox with purple glasses and a magenta forelock, sits and looks toward The Arcades' Lab title.

Choose what brought you here

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Four good places to enter the work.

  1. Black ink emblem of an android face and cart wheel on cloth-white paper.

    fiction

    Carl

    An aging Floor-Mart android is told it is time to turn himself in, but he has only ever known how to keep working.

    About 38 min read

    Read Carl
  2. A sheltered open-air virtual bar overlooks a rainy neon city. A low-poly fox and painterly mouse, rabbit, cat, and human share drinks beneath the roof.

    fiction

    Cold Boot

    Jamie discovers the Zoo, a private full-dive server where nobody asks her to prove she belongs before setting another place at the table.

    About 30 min read

    Read Cold Boot
  3. Cover of Rabies Capitalism by Austen Tucker: a snarling bull stands on crumbling foundations in a black, ivory, and rust woodcut illustration.

    essay

    Rabies Capitalism

    On AI, Labor, and the End of the Moat

    About 7 min read

    Read Rabies Capitalism
  4. Cover of I Thought I Had a Bad Memory. I Don't. by Austen Tucker: scattered fragments join a continuous ivory ribbon, forming an ordered path against a navy background.

    essay

    I Thought I Had a Bad Memory. I Don't.

    Sighted people use the world around them to help them remember thing. When you can't do that, your brain builds something different. Something that might actually be better in some cases.

    About 8 min read

    Read I Thought I Had a Bad Memory. I Don't.

Free Play Publishing

Books by Austen Tucker

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AI enablement & transformation

Hire me for the hard part.

Austen is a builder and AI transformation leader who helps engineering and product teams make emerging tools useful in everyday work — not just purchased.

Read the resume Download PDFCase studiesProjects
A sheltered open-air virtual bar overlooks a rainy neon city. A low-poly fox and painterly mouse, rabbit, cat, and human share drinks beneath the roof.

Featured novel-in-stories

A novel-in-stories about escaping the hypercapitalist grind.

7 chapters · Read online · PDFs available by chapter or as one complete edition

Explore the collectionBegin with Cold BootGet the complete PDF

Fiction

Short stories, novellas, and complete reading paths for strange little fires.

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Essays

Ideas, reflections, and dispatches from the weird and wonderful.

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Moxie walks forward with an easy stride, her purple glasses and magenta forelock catching the neon light.

Latest

  1. The Old Limitations No Longer Apply — Part 1: The Price of Admission

    A failed TV command, a Raspberry Pi, and the price of admission: how AI lets the idea come before the programming apprenticeship.

    The Singularity Log · October 12, 2026

    PDF

  2. The Old Limitations No Longer Apply — Part 2: The Rentier's Last Stand

    What happens to subscription moats and the kill zone when people can afford to build their own software?

    The Singularity Log · October 12, 2026

    PDF

  3. The Old Limitations No Longer Apply — Part 3: What Happens When We Can Make Our Own?

    Personal accessibility, furry sports games, handmade pieces, and useful projects that never needed a market.

    The Singularity Log · October 12, 2026

    PDF

  4. The Old Limitations No Longer Apply — Part 4: What's Left to Build?

    Cheaper experiments, uneven abundance, and a world of personal and community tools that do not need a business model.

    The Singularity Log · October 12, 2026

    PDF

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