Original Science Fiction – Makeshift Stories Alan V Hare

Riku Saito, a famous game developer, reluctantly complicit in maximizing player value for investors, is faced with making a choice between online personal life and work. When they decide that love is worth more money, Riku discovers the virtual world is not all that different from the physical one.

A programmer is tasked with training an artificial intelligence to understand creativity by having it create a story. As the AI works, the programmer realizes the machine’s world is one where computers can become self-aware.

Ex Caelo and Ship are helped to escape capture by a mysterious group of Rodentians who claim to be simply following the writings left to them in the past by an artificial intelligence. When it becomes clear that Ship is the AI who left the writings Ex Caelo begins to ask questions and is then confronted with an unexpected revelation about himself and his history with the fifth world.

An office worker finds a cap made of smart fabric in a thrift store on his lunch break and thinks he has taken advantage of the clerk who doesn't know what it is. However, the cap is more than just a high-tech designer garment and is implicated in a state-security mystery.

In this return to the serial story the 5th World, a technician repairing Ex Caelo and Opertarius’s ankle trackers suspects they are trying to escape and calls the authorities. Fearing exposure if he is questioned Ex Caelo, enlists Ship to take over Opertarius’s body and flee. Eventually cornered help comes from a mysterious new friend.

Despite not being interested in LARPing, Avery reluctantly attends a weekend event at a remote summer camp, put on by a group called Terra Incognita. When she arrives she finds out her character might have to be involved in boffer combat and decides to leave. However, she soon discovers that the LARP is about more than role-playing.