I finally got around doing something I wanted for a couple of months now - write short (micro, actually) SF stories in the form of news report from the future! It scratches my creative itch, but also often gives my cynical side a chance to vent. Sometimes these are inspired by current events, sometimes by something else I’ve been working on, and sometimes they are just “shower ideas”. This is not high literature - you’ve been warned!
I’ll share 2 stories here. I’ve actually published the first story / news from the future article last week on LinkedIn, and didn’t make the “this is fictional!” marker visible enough, which caused some people to jump out and condemn me for spreading FUD and making things up - I guess I struck a nerve.
City Gridlocked as Musk-Hydung Buses Hack Leads to Bankruptcy
2036-03-08: Gridlock has paralyzed the downtown core following a massive cyberattack on Musk-Hydung, the manufacturer of the city’s recently acquired eco-friendly bus fleet. The city had purchased these vehicles on credit to align with environmental mandates, but both autonomous and manually operated units were remotely disabled at the height of the evening rush. This security breach marks the third time the firm’s infrastructure has been compromised, directly contradicting the “unhackable” guarantees famously touted by celebrity CEO Alex Hydung at the previous year’s COMDIX-AI summit. In the wake of the incident, the company’s share value evaporated, leading to an immediate bankruptcy filing. Meanwhile, Hydung has reportedly already moved on, soliciting investors for a new business project.
That one was inspired by a real event.
Later, this also happened.
Seeds of Regret: Monsinnto Apologizes for AI Crop Disaster
2036-03-15: Monsinnto Corporation has released a formal apology to the residents of the Nord-Saharan region following widespread harvest collapses attributed to their mutation selection AI. The system in question, a derivative of the energy-intensive Quinn-76 model—which reportedly consumed upwards of 9 GWy during its training phase—was already under scrutiny for its involvement in two prior industrial disasters. Following current investigations, the Certified Human agency is anticipated to officially blacklist the agent. In response to the crisis, Monsinnto has pledged to reimburse seed expenses for farmers who submit applications through sanctioned channels, provided they remained in full compliance with the company’s terms of service.
Just a cynical reference on general corporate public relations.
Off-topic: one of the micro-apps
Of course I vibe-coded a small content generation portal just for these stories, to help me iterate over texts, refine them with LLMs, generate image generation prompts and social media images themselves.
A weekend project.
Interesting times!