Real news → Future story.
Each story imagines a near future inspired by today's real news.

📕 Handing Off

This story was inspired by The Pew Charitable Trusts article "AI in Mental Healthcare Presents Both Opportunities and Challenges." As AI tools are adopted rapidly in mental health, concerns are raised that safety and accountability for their judgments have not kept pace. In the story, a robot hands a student who is, by the data, within its range of response over to a human counselor on its own judgment. Is insufficient grounds a reason to avoid a judgment, or a reason that one must make it?

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Real news → Future story.
Each story imagines a near future inspired by today's real news.

📕 The Color Changes

This story was inspired by the Northwestern University article "Cell-inspired material captures energy and releases it on demand." A new material inspired by living cells' self-reconstructing function takes in light to change from liquid to gel, can store energy for months, and repeats a cycle of returning to its original state when exposed to air. In the story, a young man from the city gradually fits his life to the rhythm in which a bottle changes color. Is filling only at the speed of the sun an inconvenience, or a form of abundance?

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Real news → Future story.
Each story imagines a near future inspired by today's real news.

📕 Just Enough

This story was inspired by the Nature Communications article "Light-triggered oxygen redox activity at the edge of cobalt oxyhydroxide for superior water oxidation." By shining light on a cobalt-based catalyst, the oxidation of water is greatly promoted, opening a path to improving the efficiency of solar-powered hydrogen production. In the story, in a mountain town where a dam once held back the river, life turns on drawing just a little water from a stream. To dam on a grand scale, and to draw a little: who decides how large abundance must be?

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Real news → Future story.
Each story imagines a near future inspired by today's real news.

📕 Rearranged Material

This story was inspired by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory article "Researchers 'reprogram' materials by quickly rearranging their atoms." A research team from MIT and ORNL developed a technique that moves atoms inside a material with picometer precision using an electron beam and an algorithm, freely rewriting the material's properties. In the story, an orthotist rearranges the atoms of a prosthesis to fit not “the body of before” but “the body of now.” To restore what was, and to fit what is to come: in which of the two lies the true meaning of repair?

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Real news → Future story.
Each story imagines a near future inspired by today's real news.

📕 The Rusting Work

This story was inspired by the Fortune article "Google is building the world's largest battery system with a massive 100 hours of power in Minnesota." The iron-air battery developed by Form Energy achieves a hundred hours of continuous discharge through the principle of "reversible rust," enabling long-duration storage that can withstand multi-day weather events at less than a tenth the cost of lithium-ion. In the story, a mountain that once burned coal now rusts iron to guard the town's lights. Is work that no one notices the same as doing nothing?

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Real news → Future story.
Each story imagines a near future inspired by today's real news.

📕 One More Frame

This story was inspired by the GlobeNewswire article "Life Biosciences Announces First Patient Dosed in Phase 1 Trial of ER-100 for Optic Neuropathies." In the first-in-human trial of ER-100, a treatment that epigenetically rejuvenates aged retinal ganglion cells, the first patient was dosed. In the story, the distance is depicted between the recovery of a number—cellular age—and what the person truly wants to see. To regain young eyes, and to have something you want to see once more: what decides the meaning of a treatment, the number, or the person?

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Real news → Future story.
Each story imagines a near future inspired by today's real news.

📕 Repeating Light

This story was inspired by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory article "Achieving Fusion Ignition." Since its first ignition in 2022, the NIF has repeatedly achieved fusion ignition, and in June 2026, its eleventh ignition output 7.9 megajoules of fusion energy, achieving a target gain of about 3.8 times the input. In the story, a world is depicted where a one-time miracle made the news and the eleventh success went unnoticed by anyone. When something stops making the news, is that a failure, or proof that it has become the real thing?

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Real news → Future story.
Each story imagines a near future inspired by today's real news.

📕 The Lunar World Cup

This story was inspired by the NASA article "Soccer Meets Space Science." Aboard the International Space Station, researchers studied how the internal mass of a soccer ball affects its motion and spin in microgravity, tying the physics of space to the technology that supports sports on the ground. In this story, a generation born and raised in low gravity carried its own soccer with it, and for the first time welcomed Earth's teams to the Moon. When the very place you are born and raised becomes the sport itself, what new play will we hand to the future?

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📕 The Days of Readiness

This story was inspired by the NASA article "Liquid Lifeline: NASA Tech Could Create IV Fluid In Space." A compact device that filters a space station's drinking water and produces medical IV fluid on the spot is being demonstrated in readiness for long-duration deep-space missions. In the story, the fluid that was made sat on a shelf, never once used, and that very "never being used" became people's peace of mind. Something prepared for someone, that ends without ever being used — is that, after all, a waste?

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📕 The Want to Know

This story was inspired by the Media OutReach Newswire report on VinDynamics, "VinDynamics Debuts Its First Humanoid Robot." The multipurpose humanoid robot "Dyno" was reported to have served as a multilingual guide at a wildlife sanctuary in a pilot run, responding flexibly to visitors' questions. In the story, a guide robot that could answer anything found itself unable to answer just one question — whether an animal was happy — and sat thinking it over beside a child. When even everything we can look up still leaves a question behind, where does the want to know carry us?

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