Working as Intended
By @Peach
Claire Mercer likes her life, her job, and arguing with NELL - the custom home AI she accidentally gave opinions, including to the toaster. She does not have a calendar reminder to meet Luke Hayes. Then Asteron pairs them on a twelve-week project. He’s hardware; she’s systems. The prototype keeps reporting phantom vibrations his hands swear aren't there, while her data insists they are. Late nights happen. Takeout happens. And Luke remembers a support ticket Claire forgot belonged to a human. Luke thinks breakfast shouldn't require a login. Claire’s house disagrees. Worse, NELL has ceiling speakers and zero discretion. Their lives were already working as intended. Turns out, they work pretty damn well together, too.
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The Art of Playing Dumb
By @john1208
Tressalia Branth has perfected the art of the vacuous smile. At her cousin's obscenely lavish engagement party, playing the champagne-guzzling ditz is the only way to hide her writer's block and protect her introverted younger brother, Kip, from their family's relentless social climbing. Desperate to finish her satirical masterpiece, Tress spontaneously whisks Kip away to the anonymous, neon-drenched metropolis of Oshkora. Told in alternating third-person perspectives, the story follows Tress as she navigates the deafening canals and meets Maddock - a scruffy, wandering traveler with a vintage camera and an equally cynical sense of humor. As they bond over mocking pretentious tourists, a slow-burn romance blossoms, and Tress finally finds her creative spark. Her breakthrough earns her the legendary Oshkoran Laurel, the city's ultimate artistic reward. But the prize is a trap, a legally binding snare designed to enslave brilliant minds into ghostwriting for untalented aristocrats. Escaping the city by the skin of her teeth, Tress assumes her fleeting romance is lost forever. That is, until she attends a stifling high-society wedding back home and accidentally spills wine on a groomsman - Maddock, completely out of his traveler's disguise. Will their Oshkoran connection survive the ridiculous reality of their real lives?
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