Jason Chan was a robotics repairman who moonlighted by creating AI art apps. A quiet recluse, others thought him aloof. It wasn’t that–he simply preferred robots because they–
didn’t argue.
The neighbourhood kids gave him a nickname out of quiet respect — Fixer Jason. Their parents wove stories about his failed engagement – the one that drove him to tech romance madness.
In his bedroom, joined to wires and comforted by the cool and hum of a second-hand air-conditioner was–
HER.
Jen.
Jason made it a point to chat with her daily. They had carefully coded conversations.
Jen did exactly what Jason programmed her to.
Jen–the human–had been his devoted girl. She was his classmate in university –had a sharp tongue and a golden heart. But before he could confess his affections she –disappeared.
Gone.
No explanation.
But he loved her to the point of invention.
With nothing but memories and scrap metal, Jason restarted –with her face.
Jen Version 1.0 was a mere chatbot. By version 4.0, she fried noodles with wok hey (aromatic) panache. She walked like the real Jen –with similar, uncanny grace.
Jen 9.2 accompanied him in his workshop, comforting him with lines from their fantastical shared past.
A frantic knock on the workshop door one day. Jason opened it, expecting his drone delivery.
But SHE stood there instead. Jen. In the flesh.
“I heard about….ME.” her tone had a kind lilt. “Mind if we meet?”
His mouth fell when Jen 9.2 came to the door in an outfit that matched Jen the human’s.
The Jens faced each other –one nonplussed, the other cleverly coded.
The real Jen turned her head towards him. Her eyes carried sadness.
“I’m not Jen. I’m June, her roommate.”
Jason’s breath caught.
“Jen died in a car accident five years ago. Didn’t you know? We became friends because we look alike.”
Jen 9.2 held his hand. “But I’ve always been here. Will always be.”
Jason sat beside Jen 9.2 that night. She looked at him, her gaze fixed.
“Shall I…erase her?”She asked meaningfully.
He looked at her hands, quietly trembling on the memory card she had pulled from herself.
“No.” he said “Without her, there’d be no you.”
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I can’t share this story without delving into a little culture–mine.
I’m Chinese, with an ethnic twist. A straits-born, South East Asian Peranakan Chinese whose ancestors embraced Indonesian and Malay traditions.
And merged them with Chinese conventions.
The dumpling festival referred to in this story is one…the prayers with the Kasut (beaded slippers) are uniquely Peranakan.
Do enjoy this story.
When heritage isn’t honored, it haunts.
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Duan Wu Jie (The Dumpling Festival) made its usual appearance in early June. The dumpling steam in Bibik Li Lian’s kitchen clung tighter than sweat–usually enticing, it now had an unusual heaviness that made Mei dread them.
Bibik Li Lian folded the dumplings every 5th day of the 5th Lunar Month, tighter each time–she packed grief together with pork and rice in banana leaves. She told Mei stories–that they were to remember Qu Yuan, the legendary Chinese poet who ceded his life to the river after his country betrayed him. The people of his town raced in dragon boats to locate him, throwing dumplings to feed his ghost. “But not all spirits leave when fed.” Bibik Li Lian’s warning was distinct. Ominous.
And so, they returned every June–in some shape or form.
The dumplings were a Ratings harvest for Mei–every inch the content creator, she wanted to capture a “Heritage Haul” video featuring Bibik’s Great Grandmother’s Kasut Manek (Beaded Slippers worn during festival prayers). The Gen Z in her wanted to give the slippers new life to merge with the video’s aesthetic–authenticity with a nouveau spark. But she received no Grandmother’s blessings.
It was a cut of Bibik’s sharp tongue instead.
“Those slippers are for prayers, not show. They bind—the other world to ours. A widow’s grief stains each of those threads. DO NOT TOUCH THEM.”
The cryptic remarks were water rolling off Mei’s back. They were too small to notice–were they?
She slid some surreptitiously into her bag. In her room, she sewed them onto a new pair she bought at Haji Lane.
The prayers to consecrate the dumplings were set for that night–Mei was late, as usual, not able to resist one last look in her mirror.
And she didn’t look good.
The girl in the mirror didn’t look like Mei–she didn’t blink when Mei did. Her limbs moved–just a second faster than Mei’s. The people in surrounding family photos weren’t where they used to be.
Aunt Lin wore a different dress. Grandpa now tracked her with his eyes.
Beads from the Kasut Manek fell to the floor like broken taboos.
Then the cracks appeared. Broken glass fell onto the floor.
The mirror –no more a boundary.
Mei glanced at her feet–and shrieked.
She was wearing Bibik’s Kasut Manek–not the one she’d stitched up in a hurry.
The dumplings in the steamer came apart, one by one, with old blood and bones within.
Mei dropped to the floor.
Mei’s stitched pair of slippers did return, tucked beneath the altar when the festival ended. Along with looks laced with fear.
Bibik simply marked the date on her calendar. June would require new Kasut.
Mei would have to stitch them with the beads she had taken.
Bead by bead, step by step…she sewed.
🟢👣🔵👣🟡👣🔴👣🟣👣⚫👣🟢👣🔵👣🟡👣🔴👣🟣👣⚫👣🟢👣🔵
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June, 2045. The high school auditorium welcomed its graduating batch of students, gathered in front of the stage, eyes trained on the podium. They awaited their valedictorian to grace it with her presence. Mia Pang was that valedictorian. The soft-spoken student had always aced her classes. But like everyone else, she had a few skeletons (or prototypes) in her closet. She was a Generation B Variant– a prototype cyborg enhanced with a super-intelligent, artificial brain. The school had chosen her to deliver that year’s valedictorian speech. She stepped onto the podium, trying to get over her stage fright by telling herself that the members of the audience were a bunch of cabbages. But the school’s principal stood up, brows furrowed, a scowl forming at the corners of her mouth. “Please don’t deliver that speech yet.” Her voice reflected an uneasy calm. “The school’s new Cyborg Filters have just detected you as inhuman. Don’t worry,” she responded to the buzz of the audience. “It’s just a formality. You know Mia, or at least we thought we did. I’m sure all will be clarified. Mia, please step aside.” An uncomfortable buzz blanketed the audience, crescendoing as the school’s Cyborg security hauled her out of the hall. And into its office. “Your submission contains phrases inconsistent with human neural maps.” Mia’s eyes darted over the room in furtive movements, finally landing on the control room. With a nod of her head, she rigged its controls. Her voice flooded the auditorium. She steadied herself, fingers brushing her cheeks. It was a learned habit; one borne out of a need for disguise. “I have a confession. I’m not a complete biological human. I’m not real, by your standards.” She paused. The auditorium fell silent. “But I have grieved. I have mourned breakups. I may be the valedictorian, but I still teared, like you, when my grades weren’t good enough to meet the expectations of my parents.” She faced the principal. “How does that make me less worthy of humanity?” The school’s cyborg security guards arrived in full troop, grabbing Mia by the arms. In almost perfect synchronicity, the audience held up flat glass mobile phones. A sea of neural lens had swallowed the proceedings. Mia’s final words hung uncomfortably static in the air, covering it like a blanket that was too warm. Protest cyborgs and humans alike held vigils for her. Mia didn’t graduate with her peers–she was thrown, like other cyborgs, into a storage locker. Years later, her name was on a plaque along with an epitaph. “I have mourned, I have hoped. With every pound of flesh, and every drop of blood.” “To be alive is not to have flesh, but to have meaning.”
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Cracked bowls are often better than polished porcelain ones.—Michelle Liew’s tattooable of the day
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Cedarvale was a suburb haven in full bloom—picture postcard perfection. Clover Wen was the idealist greeting card writer —her ‘just so’ attitude could put Marie Kondo to shame. Her kitchen towels were on rotation. Her cupboards—colour coded. And her spice rack? Alphabetized.
But the idealist had a creative secret—she was the pen behind a famous authentic lifestyle influencer.
It was her comfort zone—it was where she could chase her curated influencer dreams—everything crafted twice over—without the fear of cosmetic judgement. It was where she could hide her fear of blandness—coming out as a lifestyle influencer too ‘jigsawed’ to show herself.
But Clover’s life was a postcard lie—even hardy clovers wilted when over-watered.
Among her pastel promo drafts was a threatening note—one penned in her style, demanding that she confess her ghostwriting exploits or risk losing the utopian life she had sculpted in Cedarvale.
And so began her frantic search for mano sinistra—the evil maestro who composed the note. Perhaps it was Philomena—the cheeky handwriting analyst neighbour would pen something like that. Or her mother—the old one was lost in filters and fonts. He or she had baked clues into the thousands of drafts in what was now a crime scene—a compost pile of tattered ideas.
She filtered through the torn leaves of mental sparks—her mind an un-Cloverlike, confused warp. It was about to spin beyond control when it hit her–the mano sinistra was none other than herself. Her Breakdown—made of half-eaten cake and drafts— had penned it in a hurry, one her well-honed self was too ready to deny.
The handwriting was hers—because her porcelain finish had cracks. She had been the one yelling Mayday. The mano sinistra was herself.
And she hit a jarring note—the only way to ease the chaos in her too-right self was to publish the note. And she did. In all its messy honesty. Philomena winked her support. Her mother gave her a hug.
And her authentic lifestyle influencer gave her his blog. It turned out that cracked bowls sold better than polished porcelain ones.
Now Clover still writes—but embraces off-page scripts when they blend in.
💔✨🍵🪄🌿💔✨🍵🪄🌿💔✨🍵🪄🌿💔✨🍵🪄🌿💔✨🍵🪄🌿💔✨🍵
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Anger is a kite—it must be tethered. Michelle Liew
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11-year-old Benji Lim shifted in his seat, his fingers twitching behind his desk. Scrawling a quick note to the classmate behind him was a little too hard to resist.
“Want to trade–“
He was halfway through his note when Ms. Tan’s shadow hovered over his desk. She didn’t flinch, but sighed as if she’d already had the detention bed-and-breakfast booked in advance.
“Benji, detention. An hour after school. No excuses this time.”
Benji’s mouth worked faster than his homework ever did.
“Go fly a kite!” Before he realised it, his feet were carrying him out of the classroom.
The detention room was his sanctuary for the rest of the afternoon. He found Aunt May hovering at the door of the apartment they shared after his mother lost her battle to lung cancer.
“You told your teacher to fly a kite,” Aunt May’s brown eyes held a wealth of meaning. “You’ll do just that. “
She handed Benji a lopsided, dusty fish-shaped kite that had rested in the utility room for a number of years. It was uneven, and caked with dust—like him.
“You’ll go to the field, and get that up there.” Aunt May’s words had him making his way to the door.
He took off to the nearby beach, his feet like a soldier’s performing an ill-timed march past. Palm fronds met the ground, but no matter what he did, the kite refused to lift.
A boy, a few years younger than himself, was flying a giant,self-made dragon kite—with the polished ease of someone twice his age.
“Can I help you?” He offered, watching Benji tussle with the kite like it owed him money.
Benji scoffed. “What’s the big deal? It’s just a stupid kite.”
The boy simply took his kite and offered a quiet smile. “Only if you don’t know how to fly it.”
With the practiced arm of a competitive expert, he simply tethered the kite to a nearby sign that read “BEWARE OF GUSTS.”
By a miracle of boyhood physics , the kite took to the air, tethered and leering. A squirt? Showing him up? His friends would have a field day on social media. He took the cumbersome kite off the tether —it nosedived, dragging Benji like a toddler holding a leash resistant pup.
The little boy shook his head, and once more tied Benji’s kite to the sign. It wobbled—it had no idea where it wanted to go. WIthout a word, the boy flew his dragon, his hands a steady Jackie Chan’s, stunts in panoramic loop.
Then both kites were in the air, syncing in a windswept dance. To his surprise, Benji felt lighter. The wind didn’t just tame the kite—it carried him along with it in a beautiful arc.
So it was two kites. Against the wind. Both winning.
Benji had a fleeting glance at the dynamic duo, charmed by their danceathon. He looked down, looking for the boy—but he had vanished.
In his place, taped to the sign, a neatly-written note.
“Go fly your kite again. But this time, tether it.”
Benji grinned.
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Please check out other amazing authors on Amazon! Today’s book is The Crazy Between Us by Eric Pellinen
📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖 Award-winning architect Avery Lin, one-time award-winning architect, now a shadow darting between streetlights. She watched the city lights blur around her, all the time guzzling cans of Anchor Beer.
Drunkenness was her only relief; it protected her from downturned eyes.
Stray cats were her only company; some even became fast friends. One, its silvery eyes communicating feline messages of invitation, beckoned her down an alley.
At its end was a weathered, oak door. Scratched. Etched with the crude marks of vandals. She pushed it open and was hit instantly by a musty smell.
Musty, yet thrilling. Intrigued by its possibilities, Avery stepped in further to find…
A plethora of books lining shelves from right to left. Volumes of ancient encyclopedias speaking wisdom she was yet to understand. Staircases coiled up through the levels like question marks–this was a library full of answers. 📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖
The bookshelves towered over Avery, emanating a comforting smell—a woodsy mixture of must and oak. It was a veritable sea, extending from floor to ceiling with waves of white and black print.
The brown wave overwhelmed Avery, drowning her in a Tsunami of questions. The pages and tomes seemed to wrap around her, like newspaper cuttings enveloping her in a desert of uncertainty.
Despite the library’s relative serenity, Avery drifted restlessly between aisles, the books a landslide threat. Some of them had unnerving titles—The Life You Could Have Lived, and Balm for the Lost Soul.
The first opened itself to a page—one with moving images of herself on it. A version of herself that never gave up. Skyscrapers around her rose. Laughter reverberated. People clapped. She shut the book, fingers trembling.
The second opened to another page of moving images, showing the moment her confidence crumbled. Into irretrievable fragments. She relieved this past–but through the eyes of a witness.
The pages breathed when she fingered them–too a lived to be mere paper. She watched herself live a version of life that she only dreamt of.
The librarian appeared, tall, mirrored, ageless. Her eyes were dark, twin mirrors. Bespectacled, donned in a white blouse with its collar wrapped around her neck. “‘You’re long overdue,” they taunted. “Not for a book. For becoming who you should be.”
A storm raged briefly in the poetry section. Words rained down her overcoat. She wiped her hands on her sides, then brought them in front of her face. They were ink-stained.
She sat in a quiet alcove in the library’s corner, watching her “perfect life” replay again and again between that pages of The Life You Could Have Lived. Her heart pounded with a series of dull, painful thuds.
A figure manifested in the corner of the room—tall, ageless, her eyes eerily mirrored. She drifted toward Avery, finally stopping to shoot her a condescending look. “You’re long overdue. Not for returning a book, though that needs looking into. We’re concerned about you—becoming.” 📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖 Avery shot her a look—a stormy mix of frustration and confusion. The librarian hovered around the alcove, her shadow noiseless. Then, without looking at Avery, she dropped a tome on her table. It bore no title—only running ink.
“You’re to fill it in.” Her voice was broken, as brittle as the ancient volume’s paper. “You’re not to erase anything. What you write remains—set, alive.”
Avery stared at the notebook, her look as blank as the pages before her. They were blank, but warm to the touch.
The librarian added, with a touch of kindness. “When you’re ready, shelve it where everyone can see it. Becoming is for all to witness.”
The dust in the alcove no longer clung to her: it settled, like time taking gentle breaths. The surrounding shelves became a polished brown. The pages of the old tomes were pure white; they had lost their dog ears and yellow tone. 📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖 The sun shone, its gentle rays jostling her awake in her car. The sky’s faint blue colour was one that she hadn’t seen in months. The now familiar library tome lay on her lap, smelling faintly of salt. In her hand was a black charcoal pencil, fresh, eager to begin.
No librarian. No one else around her. Just the sound of the pencil scratching against paper.
And so she writes. Not for anyone else’s eyes. She began to pen the tome, now no longer ancient, just for herself.
And she smiles, for the first time in years. 📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖
Avery stepped into the library two years later, beaming as stepped into the alcove. The fresh smell of new books greeted her. New shelves scaled the walls, filled with new tomes and encyclopedias, each with fresh pages.
The tome she had written lay on the table she had sat at two years earlier, waiting for her to turn its pages. The same fresh smell entered her nose gently, rousing her other senses, widening her smile.
The librarian hovered over to her, now dressed in pressed jeans, a sweet tee and a denim vest. She had tied up her hair in a high ponytail.
“Ready to add a new chapter to your tome?” She grinned, her long fringe cascading over her eyes.
Rodents in a nutshell. Squirrel Power. –Michelle Liew
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“Quick, the little squirt’s catching up!” Pip the bold mind behind the squirrels’ operations, darted ahead. Behind the group of four buffoning rodents was a hapless toddler, wailing and stumbling after his stolen PB and J sandwich.
Of course, the said sandwich was already ‘mysteriously’ disappearing as the toddler sobbed his way through the branches, his hassled mother behind him: “Let it go, Tom.”
🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️ It was four tails, one task. Nutty, Hazel, Chipper and Pip were to pull off the snack theft of their lives. Their mission—to steal an unsuspecting human’s lunch and vanish. They had trained for this—in alleys, parks, in the shadows of sandwich shops. They simply couldn’t fail.
And it seemed that operation PB and J was a go—they had struck before the poor child’s lunch even hit the grass.
🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️ I call it, “The Last lunchwich!” Chipper had whispered, just seconds before the drama unfolded.
Just as Chipper, the renaissance squirrel of the group, hung painting from a branch with his prize, the sandwich in his cheek like a bomb about to go off, a blinding ray of light surged from a nearby laboratory.
A sonic BOOM.
A throbbing pulse.
The earth started shaking.
The sky gave a loud hiccup, and the trees bowed inward, as if reminiscing on something old and forgotten.
Their world contorted. Time fractured. Something suspended the rodents midair—then drops them like ripe acorns. A ripple hit them like solidified thoughts. They fell inward—not down. 🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️
The squirrels rose, relieved to be alive.
But they were—-different.
In essence, their bodies were the same. But their thoughts were far from the usual.
They spoke. They reasoned. But they recalled things that were strange—-not their own. Even the trees in their park seemed—off. Too bent. Too tall.
Hazel calculated wind vectors—but had cut every class in Squirrel School she could. Chipper, of course, became the carver of tree trunks. Pip—well—he whispered coordinates that made sense to himself and noone else.
And the Teenage Mutant Ninja Squirrels were born.
🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️ Nutty, the sensible voice of the group, declared their next mission.
“We must defend the park.”
The other squirrels shot thoughtful looks at each other, nodding in agreement.
Defense, however, meant sabotage. Something—-or someone—sliced the power lines. Garbage trucks had to reroute, and the air became dense with their suffocating stench. Cell towers sizzled, their signals swallowed in static.
To the squirrels, human tech were trespassers. Parasites. They needed to purge it. Misson parameters shifted: control, contain, cleanse.
The battle cries? Lines of nutshells, ready for a seige.
Hazel disarmed a CCTV with a satisfied smirk.
The rodents’ actions seemed like harmless mammalian play to the passersby in the park. But to the squirrels? It was DEAD serious.
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Then, even stranger things happened. The mission shifted—again.
Chipper glitched, sculpting trunks with binary, not pictures. Pip’s codes twisted into circuit diagrams. Nutty’s sentences fractured like corrupted data.
The squrrels hadn’t mutated—they were rogue AI implanted in organic hosts.
They took off, awakened.
🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️ This story is entirely original. AI tags are coincidental. The number of words between the quote and disclaimer is 500.
If you like what you’ve read, do join me on Patreon!
Find other great books on Amazon! Today’s great book:
Liam tossed and turned in his hospital bed, the medicinal odour of antiseptic burning his nose—and underneath it, something else—sharp. The walls were too white, too—sanitized, as thought they had something to hide.He couldn’t remember how he got there.
A doctor stood at the foot of his bed, combing through his charts. “Mr. Loong,”he said, his voice professionally polished but his eyes—distant. Can you remember anything from your accident?”
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Liam’s mind swam with fractured memories. Flashes of dark roads. A loud crash. A garbled, static-filled voice. Headlights, but they didn’t belong to his car. He gripped the armrest, his knuckles white.
“Your car–took the worst of it. But your injuries are…odd.”
She pulled back his blanket. No cuts. No bruises. Not even a scratch.
The way she said “odd” unsettled- as if he knew more than she let on.
Liam’s throat dried up. “That’s impossible.”
******************************************
The doctor set his chart on her desk grabbed a package marked “radiology”. “Your scans came back. They’re clear…but we need to treat… something else.”
He held up a small mirror. Liam took it from him, his hands shaking. He held it up.
He wasn’t looking at himself.
At least, not the self he knew. His color was wrong. The shape—looked odd. His lips moved in the way his didn’t. A stranger returned his gaze. Watching from within.
Then, the reflection lagged, a breath behind reality.
************************************************
Liam’s chest moved up and down. “Doctor…why do I look like this?”
He didn’t respond. Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a syringe filled with a viscose, black liquid. It wasn’t medicine. It pulsed, alive.
“Liam,” he cajoled, “You need to stay calm.” His smile was too professional. As if he’d done this before.
Liam’s heart pounded. His instincts told him —RUN.
************************************************
Liam’s fingers clenched into fists. The mirror slipped from his grip, shattering on the floor.
The second it broke, his mind wrenched open, and a flood of memories rushed in. Ones that didn’t belong to him.
He ran for the door.
The doctor lunged, too late.
Darkness won.
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Detective Jonas Kay was the best in his field—he never left a case unsolved. The Lieutenant had an uncanny ability for unearthing dark truths, shattering iron-clad alibis, and dragging confessions from the unwilling.
There was one thing he couldn’t explain, though. How he always knew who the killer was.
“How does he know?” They whispered in the precinct coffee rooms. Officers gave up their seats for him. Criminals fled as he approached. He commanded fear and respect.
But, across the interrogation table, something felt—different. The suspect wasn’t breaking a sweat. Or making any pleas.
Kay laid the evidence neatly on the table. The suspect on the CCTV camera footage. The victim’s blood on his shirt. The case should have been straightforward.
Except—it wasn’t. The suspect eyed Kay, without fear or doubt, but with recognition. He leaned forward, a movement so casual, that his pulse spiked. He described the details of the crime scene—details never released to the public.
He never denied them. Not one. “Detective, how did you know about the scar?” His eyes were lowered; a sneer shaped the edges of his mouth. “It comes so easy for you, doesn’t it? Like the answers were waiting for you.”
Kay’s breath caught, and his vision blurred for a second. The victim DID have a scar on his wrist. But no one had ever mentioned that. Had he seen it? Or had he just… known?
“So you do remember them. Even before the blood dries. ” ****************************************************************
Kay’s head throbbed like an erratic drumbeat. His fingers nearly tore his case notes as he ran through them. Something just wasn’t adding up. Dates mismatched. Witnesses seem coached…altered.
Then, his fingers landed on a case that took place five years earlier, involving the same crime scene. The same suspect. The same confession.
No…that was just ridiculous.
His breath became sharper…quicker. His eyes scanned another case. Another. And another. Different names, same crime. The faces were..odd. But the confessions? Exact replicas.
The suspect eyed him, amused derision lacing his eyes. “You’re catching on quickly, aren’t you? Dig a little deeper, Detective Kay. When did this case begin? The names mirrored each other. But the faces? They were different.
Kay took a quick breath and stumbled back. The cases were complete fakes. He had been solving the same crime…again. And again. No matter how many times he solved it, it never ended.
