The Arcades' Lab / Fiction
Stories for strange little fires.
Read serial fiction and short stories online. Every piece remains part of the living web edition, with downloadable editions where available.
This is what I do for fun
A shelf of seven free stories: read their web editions or download the existing PDF editions.
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.
Butterfly.exe
An interactive-fiction story about uploading, grief, and what a copy of someone is worth.
Our Hope Chest
Siblings Heather and Xander use magical animal costumes to escape family upheaval until a public transformation forces their private refuge into the open.
Cleanup on Pod Six
A luddite janitor and an Amish teenager clean the waste beneath virtual-reality pods while debating whether Ubiq can save a resource-starved world.
La Ligne du Marais
A gambler chases a rumor through Le Marais and finds the smallest casino in the world.
Mr. Trout’s Slide
A despairing Chicagoan follows a mysterious map to a lakeside Shifter and discovers that the route to Atlantis runs down a very unusual slide.
Parts of the Whole
When Audrey’s kitsune half awakens, Lance confronts conversion therapy, his Catholic family, and the life he wants with Steve.
It Takes a Zoo
A novel-in-stories about escaping the hypercapitalist grind.
August 21, 2026
Open Port
Vivian is hit by a car. Jack keeps the signal open. The Zoo becomes a window, a body, a crime scene, and the only room where she can still answer.
August 17, 2026
Soft Reset — Part 10: The Run Continues
Four days later, Anabelle goes back one more time — and, for the first time, lets the day end instead of trying to move it.
August 14, 2026
Soft Reset — Part 9: Change the Signal
The hardest conversation in the book: what a mother owes a daughter's grief when she chose to leave the body that daughter misses.
August 12, 2026
Soft Reset — Part 8: Not a Place to Die In
Anabelle goes upstairs to the mother who is the house now, and tells her what she did — and what she found in her sister's face.
August 10, 2026
Soft Reset — Part 7: The Cost of a Life
The rig throws her out mid-fever. Anabelle comes back to a sweltering apartment, a fine from Stinky Pete, and a grief with a shape she's never had before.
August 7, 2026
Soft Reset — Part 6: Then What
One loop, Anabelle doesn't stop at the wall — she shoves through it, and the sim gives her something it was never built to give: a future.
August 5, 2026
Soft Reset — Part 5: The Same Wall, Two Different Dates
Rewinding past the curb and into the meal itself, Anabelle finds a half-second in her sister's face she never let herself see the first hundred times.
August 3, 2026
Soft Reset — Part 4: Third Stone Past the Mailbox
Two hundred tries in, Anabelle reaches for her mother at the curb — and hits the one wall the sim has never once let her through.
July 31, 2026
Soft Reset — Part 3: Exactly Enough
Dad arrives apologizing, the drinks keep coming, and Anabelle believes — for one afternoon — that her family finally made it.
July 29, 2026
Soft Reset — Part 2: The Belt
Inside the memory: an AYCE sushi counter, a mother who can't see the conveyor belt, and a little sister meeting chopsticks for the first time.
July 27, 2026
Soft Reset — Part 1: Ninety Seconds
Anabelle packs her rig in a bucket of ice and jacks into a sim of one Tuesday, four years gone — the last afternoon she believed her family had made it.
July 7, 2026
Goodgirl.tv — Part 7: I showed him the one thing I ever made for nobody but me.
A bird that won't stop throwing itself at the glass. The one thing out of a crowdsourced childhood she chose to make permanent — useless, compelled, true, and seen by no one but her. "It can't not," he says. And when the math finishes in his face, she gives him the name her friends use, and puts every chime on silent.
July 5, 2026
Goodgirl.tv — Part 6: He knew my hand on sight, and never guessed it was mine.
He knows the hand immediately. "This is a CancerCancer. This is a real one." What he doesn't know is that the maker is standing three feet away — and that the bid climbing in her harness has commas in it. "Smallest guy's gotta make the most noise," he says, and hands her the answer to a door she buried a month ago.
July 2, 2026
Goodgirl.tv — Part 5: Everyone talked about the light; she talked about the sound.
The fox was always there again — every panel, every show, never with a handler, never wanting a thing off the dog. At her first gallery opening, everyone talked about the light. Vivian pulled the visor down over eyes that didn't work and talked about the sound.
June 30, 2026
Goodgirl.tv — Part 4: Tonight I'm the human, and I think I've left the dog behind.
Braille bridge decks Nate built by hand. A human, a snake, a blind fox, and a rabbit around a table — Dogs Playing Poker, if the dogs had a worse secret. The cards run a little too good and Cancer's never once called it. Then Viv catches the layer she buried for nobody: "Oh. It's beautiful." Not you. It.
June 28, 2026
Goodgirl.tv — Part 3: I met Vivian because of a cane.
She met Vivian because of a cane. A blind woman put her hand on the most expensive fur in three markets and filed it under weather. "I'm blind. I can't see you. Why would I care if you're a dog?" The rudest, kindest thing anyone ever said to her — and then the question nobody had asked: what do you think?
June 25, 2026
Goodgirl.tv — Part 2: I'm a real-life puppygirl, bred not to judge.
Seven and a half million people jacked into her synapses, wearing her genuine joy like a coat they rented. The braindance can't counterfeit what isn't there, so the body has to actually feel it. They bred a creature that floods on cue, called the flood consent, and sold it by the minute.
June 23, 2026
Goodgirl.tv — Part 1: I don't build the room and then walk in.
You don't build the room and then walk in — you walk in and the room decides what it's willing to be. In the Zoo, Cancer is an architect with a door buried so deep she can't tell if it's hidden or just lost. Then the mother-chime rings, cheerier than the rest, and the good girl goes to fetch.
June 22, 2026
Permissions — Part 5: Battle Buddy
They didn't hire a child. A child found the room where the adults were building a door, and made herself useful before they could decide whether stopping her would be mercy or cruelty. By winter, Ana was family.
June 19, 2026
Permissions — Part 4: The First Stranger
She slipped into the garage to see the test rig moving. Jack's body reacted before the brain did — K-bar in hand, years of muscle memory. Then Anabelle screamed, and the garage became a garage again.
June 17, 2026
Permissions — Part 3: Rabbit01
The skullcap synced. The body loaded. And for the first time in years, Jack felt like something that could be loved — not a weapon, not a monster. A bunny rabbit in a third-rate simulation of a bar.
June 15, 2026
Permissions — Part 2: Eggs and Autopsy
The morning after the bus dream, Nate made eggs. Then Viv said four words that started everything: "We could build it ourselves."
June 12, 2026
Permissions — Part 1: The Bus Dream
Before the Zoo, before Fulldive had a consumer name, there was a nightmare about a bus on Guangfu Road — and two people who knew how to hold the body back from where it had been.
June 4, 2026
Gallery View — Part 7: Gallery View
A week of radio silence. Then Vivian texts twice. Mouse. Mouse, come up. He comes up. The walls of the Zoo are covered in him — and someone has pinned a postcard to a mousehole, signed 1 OF 8. — J.
June 2, 2026
Gallery View — Part 6: Stack Trace
A koi under a vent. A chalk arrow along the rafters. DRINK ME. A purple shark in a cathedral of capacitors and copper traces. Then a for-loop he forgot to protect, and a meeting in the wreckage.
May 28, 2026
Gallery View — Part 5: Breadcrumbs
A studio inside the walls. A jar of buttons labeled MAYBE USEFUL and another labeled EMOTIONALLY SIGNIFICANT BUT USELESS. Three helper-agents, eight postcards, and one shaky question: do you want her to find you?
May 26, 2026
Gallery View — Part 4: Safe Hour at the Bar
A thimble of water at the bar. Nate, again, with the Snakesim offer. Vivian's cane tocks the floor. Then Jamie's reply blooms in the air: WHO IS GEOFF AND WHY IS THIS SO PERFECT.
May 25, 2026
Gallery View — Part 3: Lobby
"Hey, you're the vending machine kid, right?" The other side of the encounter from Cold Boot — Geoff in the lobby, helmet under one arm, LET US OUT button pinned crooked to his satchel.
May 22, 2026
Gallery View — Part 2: Content Delivery Network
A moped held together by duct tape and chewing gum. A UPLOAD IS A HUMAN RIGHT flyer in the pannier. A vending machine that becomes a fortress when you're small enough to see it that way.
May 19, 2026
Gallery View — Part 1: The Painting
A mouse on the floor of a 12x12 cube, three brushes behind one ear, finally lands the shoulders. Vivian, on comms, tells him to stop polishing. Then: how do I get this to her?
May 14, 2026
Cold Boot — Part 7: Later
Jack notices the flinch. Vivian names what’s behind it. By the end of the night, Jamie isn’t sure if she’s okay — and learns she doesn’t have to be.
May 14, 2026
Cold Boot — Part 8: Knock
A knock at the door. No one there. Just paper, ink, and a drawing of a shark — and a name on the dedication that ties the whole night together.
May 13, 2026
Cold Boot — Part 6: Tide
Anabelle leads Jamie to a beach that smells like salt and tangerines, tells her to take off her corporate skin, and walks her into the surf. What’s underneath has been there all along.
May 13, 2026
Cold Boot — Part 5: Warmth
The bar applauds when Jamie comes back. A spiky teenager slides half her cursed soda across the counter — the first thing anyone’s offered without asking for something back.
May 11, 2026
Cold Boot — Part 4: Greige. Again.
“So when were you gonna tell me this was a fetish server?” Anabelle has explaining to do. Jamie has truths she hasn’t said out loud in years.
May 8, 2026
Cold Boot — Part 3: Rain
There’s no sun on the server. Just rain, jazz, a tavern that reveals itself like memory, and a missing logout button that nearly sends Jamie running.
May 5, 2026
Cold Boot — Part 2: Dinner
A kindness to a vending machine becomes a stumbling encounter with a neighbor named Geoff. By the time Stinky Pete has finished cataloguing her vitals, Jamie has only one move left: plug in.
May 4, 2026
Cold Boot — Part 1: Morning
Jamie works in a virtual cubicle farm where the sun isn’t real and her boss is named Stinky Pete. Then her coworker slides her a card with three words: “I’m about to change your life.”
May 3, 2026
It Takes a Zoo
An introductory poem for the It Takes a Zoo series, by Jumpin’ Jackrabbit (1973–2040).
Parts of the Whole
A five-part literary fantasy short story about faith, coercion, queer self-acceptance, and a kitsune named Hope.
July 17, 2026
Parts of the Whole — Part 5: After
After the miracle, Lance and Steve remember Hope but not Audrey, until one last fox-tail charm proves she was real.
July 16, 2026
Parts of the Whole — Part 4: Grace
At a backwoods revival staged as an exorcism, Hope reveals what grace actually looks like.
July 15, 2026
Parts of the Whole — Part 3: What You Could Have
Hope crashes an ex-gay meeting, drags Lance toward real healing, and refuses to let him use Audrey as a cover story.
July 14, 2026
Parts of the Whole — Part 2: Pressure and Possibility
On Mass Ave, Audrey nudges Lance toward Steve, and the rubber band meant to punish desire finally snaps in two.
July 13, 2026
Parts of the Whole — Part 1: The Arrival
We're parts of a whole. Audrey and Hope.
Short Stories
Original fiction.
June 9, 2026
Our Hope Chest — Part 2: Coney Beach
A flashback to the woods where stepbrother Jake first stumbles on the secret. Then Coney Beach goes off the rails — and Xander meets a boy in the crowd who reminds him why the costumes mattered in the first place.
June 7, 2026
Our Hope Chest — Part 1: The Attic
Two kids hide in a closet from their parents' arguing and find a hope chest behind a false wall — and inside, they find the thing they need most.
May 14, 2026
Ginny's Magic
A trans girl on an edible at a Boystown club gets pulled into a slow dance by a catgirl from somewhere else. By morning there's a scroll, a key, and a question worth answering.
March 25, 2026
Carl
My name is Carl and I work at Floor Mart. I always have worked at Floor Mart and always will work at Floor Mart, forever and ever, amen.