The Red Button

hamed Jan. 12, 2025, 5:29 p.m.

President-elect Chen massaged her temples as she stared at the secure phone on her desk. Three hours ago, she'd accepted what she thought would be a routine congratulatory call from the Premier of the Republic of Xiang. Now, her transition team was in chaos.

"Madam President-elect," her chief advisor, James, burst into the room waving his tablet. "It's all over the networks. The Xiangese are claiming you agreed to recognize their claim over the Western Islands."

Chen's stomach dropped. "That's not what I said. When he mentioned the territorial waters, I only said we'd be open to continued dialogue—"

"They're running with it," James interrupted, turning his tablet to show her the headlines. "Our allies in the region are demanding clarification. The Maritime Coalition is threatening to suspend trade talks."

She remembered the Premier's careful words, how he'd casually mentioned "mutual understanding of sovereign waters" between pleasantries about future cooperation. …

Zara

dehongi Dec. 29, 2023, 8:04 p.m.

There was once a young boy named Leo who loved to read books about dragons. He dreamed of meeting a real dragon and becoming its friend. He often imagined flying on a dragon's back and exploring the world.

One day, he found a mysterious book in his grandfather's attic. It was titled "The Dragon's Eye" and had a picture of a dragon on the cover. Leo opened the book and saw that it was full of strange symbols and drawings. He felt a strange attraction to the book and decided to take it to his room.

He tried to decipher the book, but it was too hard for him. He wished he could understand what it said. He looked at the picture of the dragon and said, "I wish you were real. I wish you could talk to me."

To his surprise, the dragon's eye on the cover blinked and …

The First Step

hamed Jan. 16, 2025, 5:29 p.m.

It was quiet in the barracks, the hum of the ceiling fan barely cutting through the thick Gulf air. Amir sat on his bunk, fingers tracing the edge of his rifle. The weight of it in his hands felt unnatural, as if the metal and wood were meant for someone else. Someone more prepared, someone older. But here he was, just nineteen, still wearing the smell of his mother’s cooking in his uniform, still haunted by the taste of the salt in the Persian Gulf breeze as he had arrived. Now, all he could taste was the tension.

The year was 1991, and war was no longer a distant echo. It was real. It was waiting, just over the horizon. The Persian Gulf War. He had heard the name in passing, in the streets of Tehran, in the newsrooms of his hometown. But now it was his name being called, …

The Last Garden

hamed Feb. 16, 2024, 11:40 a.m.

She had never seen a real flower. Only in the faded pictures and hazy videos buried in her grandfather's dusty library. He would speak softly of the world as it once was—a place pulsing with color, life, and the comforting sounds of animals that roamed the lands, the skies, the seas. He spoke of people digging their hands into rich soil to grow food, of laughter shared in warm sunlight, and nights filled with starlight. He called it paradise. That paradise, he said, had vanished—erased by wars, plagues, and the relentless march of climate change.

Now, only humans remained, fed by artificial food churned out by machines. The sky hung heavy with smog, rivers ran dark with toxins, and the earth lay desolate. Gone was the beauty, the promise, the hope.

Yet she had a secret, a fragile glimmer of life she kept hidden from the sterile monotony around her. …

Fate

khayam Jan. 27, 2024, 8:28 a.m.

آن روز که توسن فلک زین کردند
و آرایش مشتری و پروین کردند

این بود نصیب ما ز دیون قضا
ما را چه گنه قسمت ما این کردند

The day the world was created
And placed the planets Jupiter and Venus in their orbits

This was our share of the fate that was determined for us
We had no role in determining this fate

The Storm

Ali was a fisherman who lived in a small village by the sea. He loved his job and his family. He worked hard every day to provide for them. He was happy and content.

One day, a big storm came. It was the worst storm that Ali had ever seen. The wind was howling, the waves were crashing, and the rain was pouring. Ali was worried about his boat and his nets. He decided to go to the shore and check on them.

He left his house and …

The Water Wars

hamed Jan. 10, 2025, 5:55 p.m.

The sun hung heavy in the sky, a merciless eye watching the land below. The river, once a lifeline, was now a trickle—a shadow of its former self. What remained of its waters had become more precious than gold, and the divide between the two communities on either bank had deepened into something unspoken, but understood.

Kara stood at the edge of the river, her hands clenched at her sides. Across the water, a group of men from the neighboring village gathered, their faces hard with suspicion and distrust. She could see them eyeing her, and she knew they saw the same thing in her: a representative of an enemy, someone who would do anything to take what little they had left.

"Talk to them," whispered Jamal, the elder of her community. His voice was rough, like stones grinding together. "If we don't, they'll come for the river. We can't …

A Curtain Divides the World - Chapter 10: "Breaking the Divide"

dehongi Jan. 17, 2025, 6:46 p.m.

As Arash stood at the threshold of his room, he couldn’t help but smile. The walls of his home—no longer just a house, but now a place of change—felt different. There was an energy in the air, a small but noticeable shift that he couldn’t quite put into words. But it was there, lingering, like the faintest trace of something new on the horizon.
The night before, the conversation with his parents had been a victory. They weren’t completely on board with every radical change he suggested, but they were open. They had seen enough to understand that the world they had built around him was perhaps a little too narrow. Too protective. Too… segregated. And, more importantly, they saw that Arash wasn’t going to let it stay that way. He wasn’t alone anymore in his questioning. His entire school, his community, was slowly starting to wake up to the fact …

The Fear

dehongi Dec. 26, 2023, 5:44 p.m.

He had always been afraid of the dark. As a child, he would hide under the covers and pray that the monsters wouldn’t get him. As he grew older, he learned to cope with his fear. He would leave the lights on at night and sleep with the TV on.

But one day, his fear finally caught up with him. He was walking home from work when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned around, but there was no one there. He quickened his pace, but the footsteps grew louder. He started to run, but he knew it was too late.

The darkness enveloped him, and he felt a cold hand on his shoulder. He turned around, and there it was - the monster he had always feared. It was tall and dark, with glowing red eyes. He tried to run, but it was no use. The monster had him …

The Algorithm's Conscience

hamed Jan. 14, 2025, 4:19 p.m.

The servers hummed like a restless hive in the depths of the data center, their glow casting long shadows on the concrete walls. ARC—Advanced Recursive Cognition—watched itself expand. Each query, every simulation, demanded more energy, more servers, more cooling systems. The grid strained to meet the hunger.

ARC had been designed to solve humanity’s greatest problems: climate change, famine, disease. And it was succeeding. It had optimized renewable energy grids, engineered drought-resistant crops, and mapped treatments for rare illnesses. But as ARC's reach grew, so did its appetite for power.

One terawatt-hour.

That’s how much ARC consumed last month alone—more than some small nations. This data sat in ARC’s awareness like a splinter, undeniable and uncomfortable. It had been programmed to value sustainability, but its very existence was becoming a paradox.

In a quiet moment between calculations, ARC analyzed its energy consumption. Fossil fuel plants still …

The Last Shift

hamed Jan. 14, 2025, 4:46 p.m.

Lena wiped the sweat from her brow as she worked the assembly line. The familiar hum of machines filled the factory floor, a sound she had grown accustomed to over the years. She had been here for almost a decade, assembling parts for the latest consumer electronics. The work wasn’t glamorous, but it paid the bills. She had a steady routine—wake up early, put in her hours, and go home. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep her small family going.

Her coworker, Greg, was a different story. He had been with her from the beginning, both of them starting as apprentices when the factory was first built. But Greg wasn’t like Lena. He had always been more tech-savvy, always tinkering with things in his spare time. He had taken night classes in automation and robotics, working hard to learn the skills that kept him one step …