You will find here a list of great stories available on the web. From working drafts to finished journeys, everything can be listed. The only limitation: my humble opinion.
In brief: a tale of a girl, an inn, and a world full of levels (and chess, lots of chess).
Skinner, Skinner!
He’ll eat your tails and tear off your skin!
He’ll pluck out your eyeballs and devour your kin!
Skinner, Skinner!
Run while you can!
Your flesh will be taken with a touch of his hand!
Hide in the darkness, hide in the light.
Fighting is useless; Skinner is fright.
He takes our scales and hides our bones
And makes this place our very last home.
Skinner, Skinner, never open his door.
Or soon your bones will lie on this floor.
In brief: humans are doomed, so let’s create the best possible A.I. as a gift from humanity.
“Unknown vessel, identify yourself. This solar system is under the administration of the Xunvir Republic, as approved by the Galactic Federal Council.”
Ah.
English.
We had tried to talk to them. To negotiate our surrender. We had sent messages in every language, in every conceivable way. Entire committees devoted to the task.
But they had known English all along.
With a thought, I detonated the thermonuclear explosives carried by each drone. My sensors glimpsed some short [sic] of protective shield bubble kick in around the ships, but it was quickly obliterated by the power of the explosions, along with the vehicles themselves.
I stood there for some time, staring with a thousand different sensors at the slowly expanding cloud of gases and debris, but my mind was far away.
Xunvir Republic.
Now I had a name.
In brief: when the final trumped gets called, all Earth breaks loose on Hell (literally).
For millennia, humans hadn’t thought that way, they’d accepted what they had been told, treated “divine revelation” as something sacrosanct that it was death to dispute. Suddenly, that had changed, humans had stopped accepting what they were told and started asking question. And, when they didn’t like the answers, they’d started arguing. They’d found their own answers and realized there was no place for “magic” and “magery” in the world they were learning about. There were only things they understood and things they didn’t understand — yet. Their plastic, their machines, their terrible efficiency at killing, all came from that same desire to understand what they didn’t understand — yet.