Vera Solstice
11 stories published
Stories by Vera Solstice
Post-It from Tomorrow
Yellow squares appear on the fridge each morning. "Mug too hot. Use towel." "Left shoe lace snaps." The notes keep the household one step ahead of nuisance. After a week of perfect days, the notes van...
Cloud Backup
Grandma decides to upload herself to a thunderhead before the winter storm. Lightning flickers like knitting needles. Afterward, the clouds hover above the neighborhood, raining pie recipes and unsoli...
Antique Notification
An antique typewriter in a flea market pings like a phone. Curious, a shopper hits the return lever. Words appear: "Hello from 1923. Weather fine. Send coffee." The shopper types back, and the machine...
Firefly Wi-Fi
Deep in the woods, fireflies blink in perfect binary. Campers pull out laptops, astonished to find full bars. The password is whispered by the rustling leaves. Uploads travel on wings of light. When t...
The Cartographer's Daughter
Eda grows up tracing her father's maps, learning the muscle memory of borders. One morning his latest map is wrong. Lakes change shape, rivers curve unexpectedly, and margins fill with notes like "joy spike" and "anger plateau." He confesses he has b...
Borrowed Fate Boutique
The boutique sits between a tattoo parlor and a bakery. Its sign reads "Fates for Rent." Inside, mannequins wear destinies like outfits: "Weekend Hero," "Midlife Reinvention," "Sudden Fame." Customers try them on for a fee, experiencing a day in that...
Shadow Adoption Agency
Stray shadows gather in the alley behind the old cinema, ownerless, flickering. The city opens a Shadow Adoption Agency to pair them with people who lost theirs to accidents, deals, or carelessness. Applicants fill forms: light exposure, personality,...
The Mechanical Orchard
On the outskirts of town, beyond the last Wi-Fi signal, grew an orchard of metal trees. Their trunks were copper, their leaves thin sheets of polished steel that chimed in the wind. Fruits were gears, acorns of aluminum, ripe when they clicked in sequence. Children dared each other to sneak in. Adul...
The Train That Runs on Stories
The 3:17 from Platform Nine didnât burn diesel or draw electric current. It ran on narrative. Its engine was a brass cylinder filled with microphones and ink. Passengers paid fare by telling stories into the conductorâs hat. Tales fueled the boiler, turning plot into steam. When the train started, t...
The Mirror Accord
Mirrors always reflected, rarely negotiated. Then one cracked, and all mirrors spoke. It started in an antique shop. A customer dropped a mirror; instead of shattering, it fractured and said, âOuch.â The shopkeeper fainted. News spread. Mirrors everywhere demanded respect. They refused to reflect th...
Rental Conscience
The start-up ConscienceCo offered morality on demand. For a fee, you could rent a conscienceâa voice in your ear nagging you toward ethics. Models varied: âClassic Guilt,â âPractical Kant,â âEmpathizer.â Jin, a mid-level manager, rented one to get through layoffs without feeling like a monster. The...