Edward Thon, a market-obsessed protagonist in the Zoothesia universe, navigates a world where financial success serves as his primary metric for self-worth and winning, while grappling with insecurity about his place in relationships and society. In this chapter, the protagonist's character is established through his particular dislikes and desires, setting up tensions between his need for monetary validation and his deeper existential anxieties about trust and belonging.
This issue features worldbuilding analysis of the AI-generated film South Beast Asia, examining ten core traits designed to explore distributed AI systems through a Southeast Asian-inspired lens developed at the Khlongs & Subaks workshop. The piece unpacks how fictional 'strange rules' address questions of AI distribution while the issue also hosts a guest talk with AI Snake Oil author Arvind Sarayanan.
Sam Chua
Haven Tailors is a speculative fiction story set in Haven Reach, a city where tailors serve as gatekeepers who adjust citizens' clothing and monitor their personal data through case numbers, revealing a system where physical alterations encode conformity and surveillance. The narrative explores how protocol-driven systems of governance operate through mundane transactions, using the metaphor of tailoring to examine belonging, control, and the anxiety of fitting into prescribed social structures.
Sachin Benny
Jack Lord presents a noir detective story set in a post-surveillance world where wrist-worn air-gap devices have become the primary communication medium for those seeking privacy, following investigator Bram Kvass as he pursues a missing daughter case through intermediaries communicating via these off-the-grid technologies. The narrative explores how visual surveillance saturation drove the development of Stonehand devices and other gap-closing communication methods that leave no digital trace.
Jack Lord