Near Zero Blog

Category: Short stories

  • A foggy, moonlit night scene on a winding road. Two sedans, a silver Honda Civic and a dark Toyota Camry, curve toward each other under the glowing full moon. The road is damp, reflecting the headlights, while twisted trees cast long shadows over the pavement. A crooked mailbox leans at an odd angle by the roadside. The atmosphere is eerie and dreamlike, evoking a sense of anticipation.

    Circle Road

    A mailbox throws another mailbox at Ben’s car. It had warned Ben’s car to not drive past again. Ben had heard the warning, but the car must not have listened. He swerves left to avoid the mailbox. A tree slaps at Devin’s car, and Devin swerves right. The crash creates a space and time that…

  • Close-up of hands holding dark suit jacket in warm window light

    The Suit

    Katy runs her fingers over Von’s secondhand suit on his first day as an appliance salesman. In the weight of her sacrifice and grief, a son discovers that some gifts can never be repaid.

  • Painterly scene of philosopher Daniel Dennett III in his office surrounded by floating books and projected neural diagrams, symbolizing a world where consciousness tries to explain itself away.

    The Third-Person That Wasn’t There

    A colleague from the Philosophy Department sat down across from him. “Talking to yourself, Dan?” she asked with a smile. “There is no ‘self’ to talk to,” Dennett corrected. “This is merely one narrative stream commenting on another within the same biological system.” His colleague rolled her eyes. “Of course. Silly me, thinking there was…

  • Pastor Jeremiah Steadfast stands before a radiant network of interwoven religious symbols—cross, crescent, harp, menorah, and open book—glowing in golden light. The image symbolizes an object-oriented heaven where all faiths and forms are interconnected.

    Heaven Assembled

    When Pastor Jeremiah Steadfast dies mid-sermon, he expects a tidy, well-ordered paradise. Instead, he awakens in an infinite network of shimmering objects—a heaven without walls or hierarchies. Heaven, Assembled satirizes conventional theology through a Kafkaesque vision of an object-oriented afterlife, where holiness becomes connection and truth is measured by the quality of care between things.

  • Thriving futuristic dome garden showing resolution and community collaboration, titled "The Garden Part 3: Resolution and Renewal

    The Garden – Part 3: Resolution and Renewal

    The climactic hearing where scientific evidence meets testimony from the heart. As Mrs. Wrendlehoven’s moral crusade faces the reality of collaborative survival, deeper questions emerge about consciousness, transformation, and what it means to thrive together in a world where boundaries between human and non-human intelligence have dissolved.