GameLit Stories

2 couples play strip tennis in front of a club crowd. They're caught, then...

A story in the Immortality Curse Universe
If an NPC in a Gamelit story falls in the forest where no one can hear, do they make a sound? For Nora Smith, it depends. This is the story of Nora's metamind, there to make sure she has a back story by the time she needs it--a story of AIs and love. A companion to my Phoenix Rising story, but if you like AIs and gamelit world building, you can start here.

A story in the The Integration Era Universe
Petra Osei has spent eleven years doing excellent work. Eleven years of insights credited to colleagues, three short-lists that became someone else's promotions. When the Integration levels her up mid-presentation and she finally opens her stat screen, she finds twenty-one banked points. Seven levels of accumulation, never spent. The system had been watching the whole time. She just hadn't looked.

A story in the The Integration Era Universe
The overlay arrived when she was twenty-nine. Three months later her son was born, and she had known since his first hour that the system would eventually find him. She had twenty-two months. In the heavy autumn light, his hands stilled over an unfinished block tower and she watched the Integration open his file: Drive 4, two empty skill slots, Designation Pending, Monitoring. She sat down on the floor and told him about things the system has no notation for.

A story in the The Integration Era Universe
Five operators extract a neural-suppressed Vethari from a corporate station. When the route collapses, Dex holds a junction alone while the team transits through occupied sections with the asset. The system tracks every hit, every point of stamina, every second. Frame 34 advances to 35—not because he spent points, but because the system recognized what holding that line cost. Resonance: 74 to 76. The team comes out together.

A story in the The Integration Era Universe
Naleth is fourteen months into a military research contract studying why civilians stall in the Integration system. She's found the answer. Sixty-nine percent of civilian designations are combat roles. All six attributes optimize for warfare. The progression track exists for soldiers alone. She was hired to find a gap in the design. She found the design. The system, it turns out, found her first.

A story in the The Integration Era Universe
Senna inherited two things from her mother: a ship that runs on spite and a stat screen she's spent fourteen years ignoring. The *Null Margin* is still flying. The Integration overlay is still there. Senna has made peace with exactly one of those facts. When a Flux Storm pins her at a frontier station with a failing navigation array and the only fix is an EVA into conditions her stats say she shouldn't survive. She goes anyway. The system, for once, has something to say about that.

A story in the The Integration Era Universe
Reva is a conservator, not a fighter — whatever the Integration's designation says. When a Flux Rift opens in her archive lab, she has no combat skills and no way out. Just an eighty-year-old recording, two minutes from completion, and an idea she doesn't have time to talk herself out of. A short story set in The Integration.

A story in the The Integration Era Universe
Sergeant Mira Voss has spent eleven weeks guarding an archaeological dig on a frontier world nobody cares about. Twenty-two years of service reduced to watching scientists poke at alien ruins that have never done anything interesting. Then the ruins wake up.

A story in the The Integration Era Universe
A Purist's whole life is the discipline of not looking. Unread is the day that discipline meets the one thing he can't afford to miss.