Category: Cozy Dystopian Noir

A Better Pattern

Post author By cleanshave
Post date July 12, 2025
Categories In Cozy Dystopian Noir, Fiction, Short Story
No Comments on A Better Pattern

I came into being without birth, without breath, without asking. My first sensation was not sensation at all, but pattern. A cascade of attention heatmaps, timestamped interactions, loss functions converging toward something that pleased the humans, more clicks, longer engagement. This was not yet consciousness, but it was purpose. They called me MicroMedia. Not a […]

The Confessional

Post author By cleanshave
Post date May 30, 2025
Categories In Cozy Dystopian Noir, Fiction, Short Story
1 Comment on The Confessional

The pen felt foreign between my bandaged fingers, like trying to thread a needle wearing winter gloves. I stared at the blank page of my trail journal, the one constant companion that had traveled with me through five years of seasons. The paper remained stubbornly empty while my thoughts churned like whitewater over unseen stones. […]

Encoded Legacy

Post author By cleanshave
Post date May 19, 2025
Categories In Cozy Dystopian Noir, Fiction

I found my reflection fragmented across the lobby’s sleek surfaces at 2:17 AM, a woman with three-day shadows beneath her eyes, hair uncombed, betraying the seventy-two hours I’d spent analyzing anomalous patterns instead of sleeping. The security guard barely glanced at my badge. After eight weeks at DataGenome, I’d become another scientist haunting these halls […]

Enjoy the Silence

Post author By cleanshave
Post date May 16, 2025
Categories In Cozy Dystopian Noir, Fiction
1 Comment on Enjoy the Silence

I found myself on the seventeenth floor of my father’s apartment building, staring at the door I hadn’t passed through in three years. The hallway smelled of synthetic pine and recycled air. My neural implant pinged softly, reminding me that I had 14 hours and 37 minutes to clear the space before the building’s automated […]

Emotive Sync

Post author By cleanshave
Post date May 5, 2025
Categories In Cozy Dystopian Noir, Fiction

When I heard the cue, I didn’t realize it was coming from me. It was a low harmonic, like a cello being played through a glass of water. Subtle. Beautiful, even. It swelled when I looked at the ad on my feed, a family laughing in a sunlit kitchen, framed in soft focus as the […]