Impossible Choices: Short Stories by Raj Shankar

Humanity made death optional. Elara Vance thought that meant she had time.

Time to visit. Time to reconnect. Time to say the things she had been meaning to say for centuries.

After a thousand years, she has friends across seven worlds, meaningful work, and more experiences than she can count. She also carries an emptiness that nothing seems to fill.

Then she begins hearing the voices of her long-dead family.

And across the colonized worlds, immortals begin to fade.

In Episode 10 of Impossible Choices, Raj Shankar presents The Weight of Stars, a reflective science-fiction story about immortality, grief, and the people we assume there will always be time to love.

If you believed you had forever, what would you keep postponing?

Written and narrated by Raj Shankar.

Read the story and discover more original fiction:

Follow Impossible Choices for original stories about difficult decisions and the lives they change.

Content note: Death, grief, and end-of-life choices.

Copyright © 2026 Raj Shankar. All rights reserved. All original stories featured on Impossible Choices are copyrighted by Raj Shankar. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or adaptation is prohibited.

At twenty-three, a young man is offered one wish by a mysterious being.

He asks to live forever.

At first, immortality is everything he imagined. No fear of death. No limits. No reason to hurry. He can explore the world, master every skill, fall in love, and experience everything life has to offer.

But there's something he never considered.

Everyone else still dies.

As centuries become millennia, he watches the people he loves grow old and disappear. Civilizations rise and collapse. Humanity reaches for the stars. And the man who cannot die begins to discover the terrible difference between living forever and wanting to.

How long can someone endure eternity?

And what happens when there's nothing left to live for?

Memoir of an Immortal Man is an original science-fiction story by Raj Shankar exploring immortality, love, grief, memory, and the extraordinary burden of existing beyond the limits of time.

A haunting journey from one man's bedroom to the farthest reaches of the universe, where the greatest gift imaginable may become the cruelest curse.

Tonight's impossible choice:

If you could live forever, knowing everyone you love eventually must leave you, would you still choose immortality?

🎙️ Impossible Choices features original, thought-provoking short fiction written and narrated by Raj Shankar. Every story leaves you with a question that refuses to let go.

📖 Prefer to read the story? Find the written version on our website: www.threecatspress.com

If you enjoyed this episode, follow Impossible Choices, leave a review, and share it with someone who enjoys philosophical science fiction, speculative fiction, and stories that stay with you long after they end.

© 2026 Raj Shankar. All rights reserved. Memoir of an Immortal Man is an original copyrighted work by Raj Shankar. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or adaptation is prohibited.

What if you could truly understand your pet? What if that connection lasted a lifetime?

At twenty-six, Thomas walks into a clinic with an eight-week-old grey kitten.

The procedure is called Concordance. Its purpose is simple: to create a bond between human and animal that allows them to share feelings, thoughts, and something deeper than words.

Thomas names the kitten Otto.

What begins as an experiment in companionship becomes something extraordinary.

Through marriage, children, heartbreak, and the quiet passage of time, Otto is there. Watching. Understanding. Remembering.

But the most extraordinary gifts sometimes carry consequences no one could have predicted.

Familiar is a moving and thought-provoking work of speculative fiction about unconditional love, companionship, mortality, and the difficult questions that arise when two lives become inseparable.

How much would you sacrifice to never be alone?

And can love truly be unconditional when only one of you gets to make the choice?

🎧 Listen to Familiar on Impossible Choices, a podcast featuring original short fiction by Raj Shankar.

📖 Want to read the story? Visit our website: www.threecatspress.com

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the podcast, leave a review, and share it with a fellow reader or animal lover.

© 2026 Raj Shankar. All rights reserved. Familiar is an original copyrighted work by Raj Shankar. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or adaptation is prohibited.

At 10:47 p.m., Professor Sonny Steele boards a nearly empty New York City subway train. He's fifty-three, exhausted, bitter, and convinced that the best years of his life are behind him.

Then a young woman sits across from him.

She's holding a copy of a book he wrote years ago. She knows his work better than most of his students. And she has questions about time travel that even he struggles to answer.

What begins as an argument about physics becomes something neither of them is prepared for.

Before she leaves, the stranger asks him to make one promise.

Twenty years from today. Exactly.

But what if the future has already happened? And what if the one thing you desperately want to change is the very thing that was always meant to be?

Twenty Years From Today is an original science-fiction short story by Raj Shankar, exploring time travel, regret, family, and the extraordinary power of a single conversation.

Every story ends with an impossible choice. What would you choose?

🎧 Listen now on Impossible Choices, a podcast featuring original short fiction by Raj Shankar.

📖 Want to read the story? Visit our website for the written version: www.threecatspress.com

If you enjoyed this episode, follow Impossible Choices, leave a review, and share it with someone who loves thought-provoking fiction.

© 2026 Raj Shankar. All rights reserved. This story is an original copyrighted work by Raj Shankar. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or adaptation is prohibited.

Sentence | What If Justice Made You Feel Every Hurt? | Impossible Choices Ep. 7

What if justice could make someone feel exactly what they made another person feel?

In a world where punishment means experiencing the suffering you inflicted, the procedure is called the Return. Rosie has administered it more than a thousand times. The process is precise. The Department trusts the numbers. No one believes the machine can be wrong.

Then a routine domestic assault case delivers a result no one is prepared for.

Sentence is an original work of speculative fiction and psychological suspense about trauma, institutional certainty, and the difference between punishment and justice.

THE IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE: If you could make someone experience every moment of the suffering they caused, but the punishment might destroy their ability to understand it, would you still do it?

Read more original fiction: https://www.threecatspress.com

Follow Impossible Choices: Short Stories by Raj Shankar for original science fiction, psychological suspense, and stories about ordinary people facing impossible choices.

Content note: Domestic violence, coercive control, and psychological trauma. Violence is discussed but not depicted graphically.

© 2026 Raj Shankar. All rights reserved. “Sentence” is an original copyrighted work. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, adaptation, or recording requires written permission from the copyright holder.

An impossible ship appears above Beijing. For seventeen minutes, it waits. Then history begins to disappear.

As mysterious vessels strike cities across Earth, CERN physicist Dr. Yuki Tanaka joins the effort to understand an enemy that offers no demands, no explanation, and no mercy.

The deeper she investigates, the more terrifying the truth becomes.

What if humanity has misunderstood not just its enemy, but the direction from which danger can arrive?

The Arrow Points Both Ways is an original speculative-fiction story about first contact, the laws of cause and effect, and the moral cost of power without accountability.

THE IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE: If a discovery could secure your own future but doom generations you will never meet, would you keep it secret?

📖 Explore more original fiction: https://www.threecatspress.com

🎧 Follow Impossible Choices: Short Stories by Raj Shankar for original science fiction, psychological suspense, and stories about ordinary people facing impossible decisions.

Content note: Mass-casualty violence, destruction of cities, death, and apocalyptic themes.

© 2026 Raj Shankar. All rights reserved. "The Arrow Points Both Ways" is an original copyrighted work. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, adaptation, or recording requires written permission from the copyright holder.

What if you could become the greatest artist of your generation, but every masterpiece cost you a precious memory?

Freya has always dreamed of becoming an extraordinary poet. But when a brush with death transports her to a mysterious place where unwritten words drift through silver light, she discovers an impossible bargain.

She can return with poetry more beautiful than anything she's ever imagined.

The price? A memory.

Her seventh birthday. Her first love. The sound of her father's laughter.

One by one, pieces of her life disappear, even as her poetry earns her fame and recognition.

But when someone she loves begins losing their memories, Freya must confront a devastating question:

What is the point of being remembered by the world if you've forgotten the life that made you who you are?

In Episode 4 of Impossible Choices, author Raj Shankar narrates The Poet and the Pendulum, an emotionally haunting original short story exploring artistic obsession, ambition, sacrifice, memory, mortality, and the price of greatness.

The impossible choice: Would you sacrifice your most treasured memories to create something that could last forever?

🎧 Listen, reflect, and ask yourself: What would you choose?

📖 Prefer to read the story? Read the complete short story on our website: www.threecatspress.com

About Impossible Choices

Written and narrated by Raj Shankar, Impossible Choices is a fiction podcast exploring extraordinary moral dilemmas, psychological mysteries, philosophical questions, and the difficult decisions that define what it means to be human.

Follow the podcast for more original stories that stay with you long after the final sentence.

Content advisory: Themes of death, self-harm, grief, and memory loss.

Copyright © 2026 Raj Shankar. All rights reserved. The Poet and the Pendulum is an original work of fiction written by Raj Shankar. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, recording, or adaptation is prohibited without written permission.

What if you could solve every crime, but never stop one?

Jason Mercer has spent his entire life searching for answers. When a mysterious stranger offers him the ability to witness the truth behind every crime, Jason believes his greatest dream has come true.

But the gift comes with a horrifying limitation.

He can see everything. Record everything. Understand everything.

He just can't intervene.

In Episode 3 of Impossible Choices, author Raj Shankar narrates The Witness, an unsettling original short story about obsession, justice, helplessness, and the terrible price of knowing the truth.

Read the complete story: www.threecatspress.com

Content advisory: Violence, child abduction, and disturbing psychological themes.

Copyright © 2026 Raj Shankar. All rights reserved. This original story may not be reproduced, distributed, or adapted without permission.

Three hundred years after our civilization disappeared, almost everything we left behind has become sacred.

The Cloud is where the ancestors live.

Siri and Alexa are saints who once spoke without mouths.

The strange symbols carved into ruined machines are remnants of a world whose people possessed knowledge that now seems almost divine.

Then nineteen-year-old Violet discovers a hidden chamber untouched for centuries.

Inside is a time capsule filled with books, artifacts, and fragments of the civilization that came before her.

She believes she has finally found the answer to the question that has haunted her people for generations:

What happened to us?

But what Violet finds is more complicated than history.

It is a story about gods and heroes. About warnings ignored. About humanity's need to believe that, when everything goes wrong, someone will come to save us.

And Violet must decide what her people need more:

the truth... or hope.

🎧 This is Episode 2 of Impossible Choices, an original fiction podcast written and narrated by Raj Shankar.

Every episode tells a story about an ordinary person confronting a question with no easy answer.

When the story ends, the choice becomes yours.

If a belief gives people hope, meaning, and the strength to keep going, but might also make them wait for someone else to solve their problems...

would you preserve the belief?

Or would you tell them the truth?

📖 Prefer to read the story?

You can read the complete written version of “Ten Years to Act” on the Three Cats Press website:

www.threecatspress.com

You can also find more original fiction by Raj Shankar there.

Follow Impossible Choices wherever you listen so you don't miss the next story.

Original story text and narration © 2026 Raj Shankar. All rights reserved as to the original material.

This is an independent work of satire and commentary. References to preexisting fictional characters, names, brands, and trademarks remain the property of their respective rights holders. Impossible Choices, Raj Shankar, and Three Cats Press are not affiliated with or endorsed by those rights holders.

Every Hour, Every Day

What if you met someone you knew you could love, but you also knew exactly how little time you would have together?

Marcus has spent thirty-seven years assuming there will always be more time.

Then he meets Kael.

She is Luminari, a refugee from a dying star system whose people live their entire lives in less than two years. To Kael, every sunrise matters. Every sensation matters. Even something as ordinary as the smell of a tomato deserves your full attention.

Marcus knows how their story will end before it truly begins.

The question is whether knowing the ending makes the love less worthwhile...

or infinitely more precious.

When the story ends, the choice becomes yours.

Would you let yourself love someone if you knew from the beginning exactly how soon you would lose them?

📖 Prefer to read the story?

The complete written version of “Every Hour, Every Day” is available on the Three Cats Press website:

www.threecatspress.com

Visit the site to read the story and discover more original fiction by Raj Shankar.

🎙️ Follow Impossible Choices wherever you listen so you don't miss the next story.

Copyright © 2026 Raj Shankar. All rights reserved.

“Every Hour, Every Day,” this episode, and all original stories featured on Impossible Choices are original works written by Raj Shankar and protected by copyright. Unauthorized reproduction, adaptation, distribution, recording, publication, or redistribution is prohibited except as permitted by law.