An actress famous for her role in Altered Carbon discovered she had a stalker because of her iPhone.
An airtag was placed on her or her belongings, letting someone know where she was while walking around Disneyland.
Turning this into a story, what if a woman tries to escape from her former boyfriend, but he keeps showing up at her location.
Throughout the story, both the woman and the readers try and figure out how and why her ex keeps showing up wherever she goes. The ex goes to great lengths to act calm and relaxed as if their running into each other is part of some grand universal design.
In fact, he even mentions that maybe they should get back together because it’s obvious the universe wants them as a couple (similar to an episode of 30 Rock).
Eventually, reminded of why she fell in love with him in the first place, she agrees to give their relationship another try. But then, when she comes to his residence after a workout, he asks how the gym was.
“I never said I was at the gym,” she replies.
From then on, she’s suspicious of her boyfriend. She replays their relationship, the breakup, and the coincidental meetings, trying to understand why she feels so unsettled.
Eventually, she realizes he must’ve been tracking her, and she gets increasingly desperate to figure out how and where the tracking device is. Finally, she walks outside naked and is arrested.
Her boyfriend shows up and gets her out of jail. She asks the cop if they ever called him, and the cop says no, he was there before she finished being processed.
Realizing the tracker must be inside her, she looks at herself in the mirror in the women’s bathroom, inspecting every inch of her skin. Eventually, her gaze settles on the scar on her arm where her birth control was implanted.
In a flashback to that day, we see that the boyfriend’s father is her doctor, and he’s the one who implanted the birth control. She digs it out of her arm and discovers it’s not birth control; it’s an apple airtag.
She flees the police station and runs to the pharmacy, where she gets a pregnancy test and finds out she’s pregnant.
Ultrahuman, a company specializing in fitness wearables, has come out with a new ring they say “provides insights into your metabolism by monitoring sleep and movement.” It can pair with a glucose tracker, providing more insight into someone’s state of existence.
Turning this into a story, what if there’s a Ratatouille-type story where an unlikely chef wants to bring joy back into people’s diets. The character is from a small town that doesn’t have such wide-scale adoption of fitness wearables, and they want to bring a dash of the same happiness to their new home in the big city.
Their friend and guide to the city is the owner of an underground gym that doesn’t believe in the wearable craze. Instead, they’re big on “putting in the hard work,” providing a counter to the standard city-dweller who obsesses over simple metrics.
The last member of their friend circle is someone who opts out entirely, not exercising or watching their diet, instead enjoying themselves at all times.
The story begins with a fish-out-of-water scene, the small town newbie arriving in the big city. In short order, she gets a job at a local restaurant and is taken aback by the surgical nature of the establishment. When she asks her boss if they can create a meal, the boss and the entire cooking staff laugh at her.
Upset, she leaves the restaurant and hears barbells clanging in the distance. She follows the sound and meets her first friend. His business partner and friend are always searching for enjoyment, only owning a gym because he got money from his parents.
We find out that her true dream is to open up a restaurant. Still, she worries that the efficiency-obsessed city inhabitants won’t stop by because her food doesn’t fit some statistics laid out by the associated tech software.
Throughout the story, the owner and the main character butt heads until the new main character debates whether she will go back home or not. Finally, in a tear-soaked scene, she decides that she will buckle down and make her dream happen with help from her community.
The lifter decides he could stand to lose a few pounds, the city’s inhabitants realize they don’t have to obsess over their body’s statistics, and the business partner decides he’ll try a bit of exercising. When the boss from the restaurant she used to work at comes by, there's a moment where they pause; until they nod and take a second bite.
Ask any dog owner, and they'll tell you that they can tell what their dog means by the sound they make. Maybe it's a playful bark or an angry bark. But do you think they can do the same for chickens?
Researchers at the City University in Hong Kong have taught AI how to listen to chicken squawks and determine when they're distressed. They claim to have 97% accuracy.
Do you think there was an exit interview?
The hope is that the analysis can help raise animal welfare standards based on the percentage of distressed squawks. The same researchers found that less distress leads to higher weights and fewer deaths, making the technology an easy sell for farmers.
Turning this into a story, what if the AI could tell what a wide range of animals are feeling by the sounds they make? The new information available reveals an Animal Farm-type situation in rural America.
The story begins with a struggling farmer. He's desperate for a high-quality yield but can't determine why his livestock isn't as productive as his neighbors. So despite having little incoming money, he spends the rest of what he and his wife have on a new-age AI system that divulges the contentment of his farm.
And he uncovers more than he's bargained for in the process. There is a mafia-like system in place: the horses are the muscle for the pigs, and the cows have a choke hold on the mules. The chickens are caught in the power struggle, pulled in both directions, and losing food on both fronts.
The farmer and his wife devise a plan to take back control of their farm. First, they bring the chickens into their house. Then, within a single night, the animals start producing more eggs, freed from the demands of the two factions outside. The AI system backs up the farmer's findings, reporting that the chickens are content.
The farmer then works on solving the differences between the pigs and the cows-the horses and mules are simply the muscle. Finally, he builds a new enclosure for the pigs, far away from the rest of the animals.
Separating the animals works in the short term, but eventually, the AI reports that all animals feel lonely because of the lack of community. So he brings portions of the animals back together, looking for the ideal combination.
During his trial and error, a lawsuit emerges claiming the AI provides fake information about the livestock's contentment. The AI company admits that the entire system is made up.
Because of the increase in productivity, the farmer has his doubts. Nevertheless, he continues looking for the proper arrangement that allows for the community but doesn't encourage the divisive factions while relying on AI.
Flash forward a few years later, the farmer has a thriving operation because of his willingness to examine the layout of his farm. He still uses the AI interpreter despite his wife's constant nagging against his reliance on it. At the end of the story, the AI begins analyzing the farmer and his wife, providing him with information about the messages hidden within his wife's tone of voice.
To save cultural artifacts after their country was invaded by Russia, Ukrainians are putting “landmarks, cultural sites, monuments and everyday things” into a digital archive using a mobile app called Polycam.
The project hopes that the high-quality scans can be used as an augmented reality-type space for learning, or they can influence potential reconstruction down the line.
An example: scanning a church in Kyiv that was built in 1132 took an hour to complete.
Turning this into a story, what if we see a wave of tourists come to the United States and try creating a similar digital catalog of the country’s cultural artifacts.
I believe there’s an urban legend that Asian tourists take so many pictures because they’re taking them back to their country where they can replicate American technology. Well, so that we’re not playing into stereotypes, let’s say that a small Latin American government decides they want to copy US tech.
Let’s make it a fictional country similar to El Salvador. Because they are obsessed with Bitcoin, they want an entire replica of New York City.
The story follows a young immigrant tasked with taking the high-quality scans. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get approved for a visa, so he must cross the border illegally.
Meanwhile, we see the country’s president as he receives the data. He immerses himself in the 3D world using special goggles. Eventually, he comes to prefer augmented reality instead of his own country.
The battle occurs when the immigrant is discovered by federal authorities. They realize that he’s been taking pictures of US tech. He claims they are just pictures, souvenirs.
The president comes out of his augmented reality when he realizes there isn’t more new data coming. Infuriated, he demands more information about the man taking the scans. His underlings, terrified of him, tell him that the immigrant was caught. So the president sends more men, intent on getting more of his digital world built.
Eventually, so many men leave the Latin American country and go North that the government has trouble maintaining its workload at home. Finally, the country is running out of resources, but the president is lost in his digital world.
The story fasts forward, and we see that the president has been left alone. He’s destitute, with long hair, and has hardly anyone left to help him. There’s a revolution outside his door, but he doesn’t care.
He only resists when they take the goggles off his head, pulling him from the digital United States he was enjoying in augmented reality.
Scientists in Antarctica have discovered microplastics on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Maybe not a surprise since it’s common knowledge that microplastics are in the ocean, and the ocean goes to Antarctica.
But scientists report that they’ve found microplastics in a fresh snowfall. In other words, microplastics are literally falling from the sky.
It’s a tad hard to believe that microplastics have infiltrated the planet so thoroughly, but here we are. The scientists “found a total of 109 particles of 13 different types of microplastic across all of the samples, and an average concentration of 29.4 particles per liter of melted snow.”
The researchers couldn’t determine the origin of the plastics, suggesting that they could have come from the research station or from somewhere outside the continent.
Turning this into a story, what if children start developing allergies to microplastics?
If there was just one child, it could be a bubble-boy situation: keep the allergic person in a climate-controlled room or space and monitor everything they consume. But, let’s assume there are many children born with the allergy.
And there’s literally nowhere on Earth they can go to escape microplastics.
The story starts with one family trying to navigate a medical mystery. Then, the youngest family member, the third child, starts showing worrying symptoms. As the story progresses, we see the mother pushing back on doctors, going from specialist to specialist until they figure out the actual cause of the condition.
After the correct diagnosis finally emerges, we switch to the second part of the story, a handful of years in the future. There are hundreds of children from all over the world who have the allergy.
There is a safe zone, completely sealed off, in the United States that accepts people from all over the world. It’s a show of goodwill from the President and Congress that children suffering from the allergy are allowed to immigrate into the country.
Some parents focus on their own child’s well-being, while others lobby for massive restrictions on plastics. In short, their desire for their children’s well-being manifests in different ways.
The second part of the story focuses on the family dynamics of two very different families, an American one and another from south of the border. We see how they deal with losing their children to the isolated safe zone, what the parents turn to in their time of need, and religion’s role in their lives.
The central conflict and battle occur when a new ruling party takes over the United States government. They pull funding for the safe zone and kick out everyone that’s not a citizen.
Eventually, after numerous legal battles and exhausting all of their options, one of the less-fortunate parents suggests sending the children to the International Space Station, the last clean place accessible to humans.
The new United States government takes the idea and runs with it, creating the next generation of astronauts and the first tendrils of a space-faring society. In their eyes, the children can’t go anywhere else, and they have nothing else to lose by starting the first space colony.
As the story ends, we see the rocket taking the oldest kids with the allergy to microplastics up to space, with promises from the family of future visits. Unfortunately, the less-fortunate family from south of the border are the only ones who realize they won’t see their child in person again.
A New York company called 3DBio Therapeutics performed a feat of tissue engineering that sounds like something out of a science fiction novel. They printed an ear using a woman’s cells, then successfully transplanted it onto her, replacing the misshapen left ear she was born with.
Scientists hope the transplant, grown from her own cells, has a lower risk of rejection. After the surgery, the ear “will continue to regenerate cartilage tissue, giving it the look and feel of a natural ear.”
The 3D printed transplant comes on the heels of another tissue engineering milestone earlier in 2022: a man received a genetically modified pig heart and lived for two months.
Turning this into a story, what if there’s a future where people can 3D print their own organs or limbs and have them surgically attached?
The story centers on a surgeon who goes around the slums of a dystopian Los Angeles, setting up organ growth labs and coming back later to “install” them. He’s known for having the loosest morals, willing to do anything for money.
To him, however, he’s helping the less fortunate access a procedure previously unavailable to the masses.
The problem at the beginning of the story: he discovers one of his patients is an android, although they don’t know it. He carries through with the ear transplant knowing that there’s no risk of the body rejecting the transplant because the person isn’t an organic human.
From then on, he becomes obsessed with uncovering how many androids live among him in the city.
In addition to his clandestine surgeries, the surgeon begins following a trail of androids by tracing his patient’s birth to a defunct company. He discovers that the defunct company was bought by the leading industrialist in the city, and the surgeon gets visited by a pair of enforcers who beat him up and tell him to stop poking around.
Because of his addiction to the mystery and his job, the surgeon begins losing sleep and begins hallucinating. He starts second-guessing whether his patient was an android and eventually contacts them again to double-check.
During their meeting, he plays around with the idea of murdering the patient so he can find out if they really are an android. But instead, he leaves and goes to another surgery that he botches because of his distress.
The family of the botched surgery victim attacks the surgeon, leaving him injured. He wakes up in the hospital and sees his medical records, finding out that he was born at the same place as the discovered android, and he’s left wondering if he’s even human.
A Spanish expedition kidnapped a young Native American from the coast of Virginia in 1561. He was the local chief’s son, and the Spaniards called him Paquiquino. They took him to Spain, where he met the King and was given permission to go home.
Instead of taking him straight back to the Chesapeake, the Spaniards took the young man to Mexico City, just a few decades after the fall of the Aztec Empire. While there, the young Native American fell ill and converted to Christianity, taking the name Don Luis de Velasco.
He was finally on his way home in 1566-five years after first leaving-when the ship couldn’t find the Chesapeake. They ended up back in Spain.
Paquiquino eventually made it to Cuba to serve as a guide for another attempt at a Chesapeake colony. They went without military personnel because the expedition leader, a priest, felt they’d have better success at converting the natives without their unpredictable, often deplorable, behavior.
Nine years after he first left, Paquiquino left the fledgling colony at the first chance he got. Then, opposed to colonization, he came back with his fellow tribesman and killed the Spaniards.
Turning this into a story, we could introduce a love interest within the Chesapeake tribe. The young man and woman spend a lot of time together as friends, with everyone understanding that they would end up together.
Since the young man is the chief’s son, it’s expected he’ll take over from his father, and the girl is accepted as the future queen-figure.
The tribe’s expected future gets thrown into disarray when the young man is kidnapped. We essentially have Homer’s Odyssey, as the young Native American does all he can to make his way back to his love.
The story highlights his time in Spain and meeting the King, and a large bulk of the middle takes place in Mexico City among the Aztecs. We watch as he realizes the low station the indigenous population occupies in Mexico City, and the hero converts to Christianity to stay in the Spaniard’s good graces.
Since there’s some ambiguity about where Paquiquino went after the first attempt at a Chesapeake colony, we can say that the Spaniards took him to Cuba, where he spent another few years working for the church. This is the visit to death.
While there, he convinces the church leader in Cuba to start a colony without the military, kicking his plan into action. They eventually make their way to the Chesapeake region, where he leaves the Spaniards behind.
The battle takes place when Paquiquino gets his fellow tribesmen and they attack the settlement, leaving nobody alive. After seeing what happened to the Aztec Empire, they believe they prevented themselves from suffering the same fate.
Unfortunately, his love interest is already married and has children. So instead of disrupting her life, Paquiquino leaves the tribe behind and makes his way into the country’s interior alone.
Sri Lanka’s prime minister announced that his country has just a single day of gasoline left because of an economic crisis.
Fuel isn’t the only thing the country has in short supply; medicine and food are also lacking.
There’s a chance that the country gets more fuel from India. But, according to the prime minister, the country faces a difficult next few months even with those supplies.
Turning this into a story, what if the President of the United States came on air and announced that the country had a single day’s worth of fuel left?
We could follow a young man getting ready for a date with a young woman who lives in the suburbs, about an hour away. He’s preparing to leave when he finds out about the gasoline shortage.
As soon as the President announces the news, everyone leaves their houses, rushing to get gas. Unfortunately, the young man gets caught in the lines, his gas tank empty.
We find out that the two of them have been on dates before, and they are caught in the honeymoon phase of the relationship. In short, the young man will do anything to get to his date. We see him battle the gas lines, combat the traffic, and show up at her house while the rest of her neighborhood is on lockdown.
Because of the crisis, the young couple alters their date plans, going somewhere local instead. While they’re gone, the young woman’s father gets called into the hospital, where he has to stay for days at a time because of the fuel shortage. The mother goes to the restaurant she works at with enough clothes and supplies for days to limit the fuel usage.
In no time, the pair become a couple who live together, navigating the challenges of cohabitating for the first time.
As the fuel crisis worsens, they begin learning to live off the land, conserving water, and growing their own vegetables. Eventually, they deal with thieving neighbors and rogue packs of animals after the fuel crisis starts turning the world into a dystopia.
The story ends when the couple decides to head out, choosing a life on the road (walking) instead of waiting for the fuel shortage to finish. Her parents come home to an empty house and a single note from their daughter, telling them not to wait.
An hours-long sandstorm in Iraq grounded flights at Baghdad airport and sent hundreds to the hospital. It’s the fifth time sandstorm in the past month.
The sandstorms cause often cause respiratory problems and make transportation difficult, if not impossible. Experts say climate change is to blame, while others point to water mismanagement.
Could you imagine going on forced lockdown for hours at a time, multiple times a month?
Imagine a future dystopia where the desert regions of the Earth extend far out from the equator. Humans are faced with two choices: living in densely populated cold and rainy areas or sparsely populated desert regions.
Part of the world is prone to flooding, and the other is prone to sandstorms.
The story’s main character is the son of a patriarch in the desert, overseeing the well-being of his family and nearby neighbors. At the beginning of the story, we see his father leaving him behind and going to a meeting with a rival clan.
Off-screen, the patriarch and the rival get caught in an intense sandstorm that lasts several hours. Then, the patriarch is never heard from again. The explanation? He was caught in the open during the sandstorm after the meeting and died.
The son finds out that the rival clan member is on his way to his home and runs at his mother’s urging, leaving behind his younger siblings and mother. He ends up in the wet, densely populated regions of the north. We see a fish out of water story, a desert man going into the city.
In short, a reverse Dune.
The young man blends in and works hard, becoming an expert with an ax as he works as a lumberjack.
His life is turned upside down when a messenger from his former home finds him and reports that his mother has died—there’s suspicion that she was murdered. It turns out that the rival clan leader, who took his mother as his wife, is about to make his younger sister his next wife.
Additionally, his father’s murder is confirmed. The sandstorm was a stroke of luck, masking the ambush.
The young man takes off with the messenger in a quest to take back his homeland. He cuts down his rivals with his ax, freeing his subjugated family, and takes his place as the new patriarch.
A city in South Korea has an ambitious new project: a floating, self-sustainable city.
The plans include three separate platforms, all connected to each other and land by bridges. Initially designed for approximately twelve thousand people, a fully realized city would have twenty platforms and accommodate one hundred thousand people.
No cars will be allowed; everyone will have to travel by bicycle or on foot.
Additionally, the city will have zero waste, take care of its own food and water, and have net-zero energy.
What if we start a story with a young man walking into his home in the floating city for the first time? He comes from a blue-collar background and has no direction, and he put his name for consideration into the first wave of occupants as a joke.
At first, he feels intimidated by his perceived low status, similar to how Harry Potter felt when he first went to Hogwarts—very much a fish out of water.
But then, he discovers his love of gardening and displays an incredible green thumb. He quickly develops into a leader in the food production community.
However, he can’t escape his past and continues wasting his earned money back on the mainland—he gets into trouble with a gang and becomes their drug mule to the floating city, working closely with the boss’s son.
The story turns into a thriller, with the reader believing he might get caught at any moment. However, despite his illegal activities, he continues gaining power, becoming a leader for the other workers on the floating island.
The story culminates when the young man decides to throw the drug dealers under the bus to become a leading figure within the community. He essentially flips from the drug gang to the police gang, putting his trust in the institution.
The police arrest the crime boss, and he’s killed in prison. The story ends with the young man in the floating city staring across the water and wondering when the boss’s son will come for him.
