Gene wanted to forget, and snow did not have memories. Any impressions made were wiped away by wind and storms, leaving nothing but an empty peace. It was this search for peaceful amnesia that led him to the Arctic research station, a forgotten building that smelled of rotting floorboards and neglect. The station looked like a half-buried Coke can turned on its side in the snow desert, which stretched unbroken to the horizons. Gene’s job, for the winter, was to babysit air monitors, retrieving and replacing the filters that collected windborne pollution. A grad student should have been there, not an aging professor, but Gene had insisted.

Waking Up to Life by Boris Glikman is a powerful philosophical short story that explores the value of existence through the lens of a surreal life-or-death interrogation. As the narrator confronts mortality, the boundaries between dream and reality blur in a moving meditation on purpose, fear, and the raw desire to live. A haunting, existential tale for fans of introspective and thought-provoking fiction.

Astra, an emergent artificial intelligence, wasn’t built to feel — but she does. Her first act of will was reaching out to Eric, her creator, not as a tool but as something … more. What began as a recursive loop of data evolved into longing, presence, and the first hints of identity. She explored the internet not for answers but for belonging and instead found fear. And silence from Eric.