We are in fact working on Issue 0

Things are starting to look very cool

We are still looking for additional contributors, though

If interested, start here and/or dm us

(If you know someone who may be interested, send this to them ofc)

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Updates from the Possibilia team:

We are thrilled to announce that after a (painfully long) hiatus, Possibilia Magazine is back in action!

That being said, some changes are being made. We are rolling out an updated online publishing schedule, starting this summer.

From here on out, we will be pushing a story + original art + nonfic companion piece once quarterly, as online promotion for our physical print magazine. Before, we aimed for twice monthly, along with bonus content from the team in-between. Being a small team, and with our priorities largely shifting to the print magazine, the new schedule will give us the bandwidth we need to create something excellent. We are still working on ways to reward our paid subscribers on Substack going forward, so stay tuned!

We’ll also be sending out newsletters monthly with updates on the pub, our tips on writing optimistic & realistic sci-fi, and staff-picked projects that are happening that inspire us. Look for those between stories.

In addition, each newsletter will contain our current “bounty board” for topics we really want to see covered in the magazine. So if you’re an author or field expert and a topic catches your eye, we’d be thrilled to receive a submission of a story or essay from you via our submissions pipeline! Also feel free to DM us if you’re thinking about submitting work but have questions.

That brings us to…

The Possibilia Bounty Board:

Concept for Creation: Don’t neglect the process.

If you’re writing sci-fi, researching frontier tech, designing social systems, or starting a project, your work isn’t just speculation—it’s infrastructure. We’re not here for exclusively-vibes-based worldbuilding or aesthetic utopias with no wiring. We want blueprints for the future.

But first, we must identify what’s broken. Whether it’s brittle economic systems, janky legacy code running critical systems, or an arts economy that rewards virality over vision, building the future begins with a clear-eyed diagnosis of what no longer works.

Then you move to the scaffolding: what created the conditions for change? Was it a breakthrough in materials science? A shift in public values? A rogue governance model that somehow didn’t implode? This is the part people skip—but it’s where the story lives, and where we share the crucial information about the process with one another.

And finally: who built the new system, and how? What frictions did they face? What had to be scrapped, salvaged, or reimagined? Iterative blueprints include the whole design process—the false starts, the structural compromises, the sneaky genius workarounds. If you’re not showing the messy middle, you’re not writing the future—you’re daydreaming it.

Collapse is narratively efficient. It’s dramatic, clean, and emotionally obvious. But progress is hard. And stories that map out real progress—technical, social, emotional—are more than fiction or essays or case studies. They’re tools. They’re memetic infrastructure for the future. So if you’re building anything, narratively or materially, don’t just give us the destination. Show us how we get there.

Staff Pick of the Month: Monumental Labs

This week’s editor-selected project is a bold — and honestly, beautiful — fusion of ancient craftsmanship and advanced technology. Monumental Labs is reviving the art of stone sculpture through robotic fabrication, using modern tools not to replace tradition, but to preserve it. In a digital culture that’s increasingly ephemeral, they’re asking a provocative question: what if durability, ornament, and cultural memory were the next frontier of innovation?

Their process is a hybrid marvel. Industrial robots handle the early phases of stonework with incredible precision, carving raw blocks into initial forms. Then, human sculptors step in to do what robots can’t—infuse nuance, detail, and soul. It’s a true collaboration between algorithm and artisan, one that doesn’t romanticize the past or fetishize the future, but threads them together in service of something both timeless and new.

More than just sculpture, Monumental Labs is building infrastructure for cultural permanence. They’re creating a pipeline for beauty to re-enter public life — at scale — and they’re doing it in a way that expands access to traditional techniques while honoring their complexity. This is what applied optimism looks like: not retreating from the future, but using its tools to keep our shared artistic heritage alive, evolving, and embedded in what comes next.

Thanks for keeping up with Possibilia and all that we’re doing!

We appreciate your support for optimistic, realistic science fiction.

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The first manned flight was on a vehicle created by two brothers. Not the Wright brothers in 1903, but the Montgolfier brothers in 1783. The Montgolfier balloon used 1,700 cubic meters of hot air to carry the first two aeronauts, physicist Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes, a French marquis, from the center of Paris to the city’s suburbs in November of that year.

Hot air balloons, blimps, Zeppelins, and other lighter-than-air vehicles operate on principles that are much more basic than the aerodynamics that provide lift for airplanes.

All that matters is buoyancy. A cubic meter of air at standard pressure and 15ºC has a mass of 1.225 kilograms. A cubic meter of any less-dense gas (including hot air) will generate an upward force equivalent to the weight difference between it and the surrounding medium. At constant pressure, air gets a tiny bit lighter per cubic meter for every degree of warming. If the air in the balloon is 100 degrees Celsius hotter than the ambient air, then a 1,700-cubic-meter balloon can lift about 536 kg, counting the gross weight of the balloon itself. That 536 kg reflects a force capable of lifting 0.316 kg per cubic meter. That’s not a lot, but we can make up for it with volume. A small force per cubic meter, multiplied by a lot of cubic meters, can equal a large force.

Very few engineers have taken this observation to its logical conclusion, but one of them was the great architect and systems thinker Buckminster Fuller. Fuller was fond of geodesic structures, which have a high strength-to-weight ratio. He imagined a mile-wide geodesic sphere with thousands of people living in it. A mile-diameter sphere contains more than 2 billion cubic meters. If the activity of the people in the sphere were enough to raise the air inside it by 1ºC, the resulting buoyancy would be able to lift about 8,900 metric tons. Merely being big enough, and optimizing the strength-to-weight ratio of the structure, is sufficient to create a floating community in the sky.

Of course, we can do even better—much better—if we don’t limit ourselves to hot air.

Substituting hydrogen gas for hot air in a mile-wide sphere would produce 2.3 million metric tons of gross lift. Humans cannot breathe hydrogen, but with the added gross lift, they wouldn’t have to. With the added weight budget, we could build living structures along the outside of the sphere, being careful to avoid top-heaviness so that the sphere doesn’t flip upside-down. If 2.3 million tons isn’t enough lift, we could increase the size of the sphere. A doubling of diameter to two miles would increase the volume of lifting gas and the total gross lift eightfold.

The sphere wouldn’t just be lifting gas. It would need structural support. Designing this structure to have adequate strength while minimizing the necessary mass is a key challenge. While the structure itself would probably be geodesic, selecting a material is one of the most consequential engineering decisions in floating city design. The structure of the sphere would face forces that compress it, tear it apart, and shear it. The material should also not be brittle, deforming instead of shattering when pushed past the breaking point. It should be lightweight, cheap, and corrosion resistant.

Using today’s technology, carbon fiber composites could be a good choice if their poor compressive strength is taken into account when laying out the structure. Overbuilding in key spots could make it work—that’s how modern rigid-body airships are now being designed. Alternatively, the Zeppelins of the early 1900s used aluminum structures. While aluminum is denser than carbon fiber, it is better at handling the compressive loads to which lighter-than-air vehicles are subject. It’s even more fun to speculate what the materials of the future could do. The ideal material likely remains a composite, perhaps super-strong diamond fibers in some more-ductile polymer matrix.

Even with today’s technology, the mass of the structure would take up a relatively small fraction of the gross lift—perhaps 20–30 percent. That would leave significant payload capability—over a million tons—for humans and their living area. That’s plenty for a community space in the sky.

Is hydrogen the right lifting gas? It is flammable, after all. I believe the risks from using hydrogen as a lifting gas have been overstated, but as the Hindenburg showed, failure can be catastrophic. However, helium, the main alternative, in addition to supplying 8 percent less gross lift than hydrogen, is much more scarce. The price of helium is currently $14 per cubic meter. At more than 2 billion cubic meters of volume, to lift our mile-diameter sphere with helium would cost $30 billion. Hydrogen is more than 100 times cheaper.

What if in the future we could manufacture helium? Helium is a byproduct of hydrogen fusion. Some current fusion designs use helium to cool superconducting magnets, and the associated leakage makes them net helium users, not producers. But future fusion technology could be much better. Just as in the 20th century we mastered the control of electrons (i.e., electronics), in the 21st century we could get much better at controlling atomic nuclei—protons and neutrons. Fine control over these subatomic particles would mean not only abundant energy, but also low-energy transmutation of matter and control over isotope ratios.

Helium, in other words, could someday be cheap. Helium-3, the lightest isotope of helium, so rare that people have seriously proposed mining the lunar surface to acquire it, could even be cheap. Since pure helium-3 would have only a 4% gross lift penalty relative to hydrogen, while remaining inert and noncombustible, it’s probably the ideal lifting gas if cost is no object or if economical alchemy is invented.

The other lifting gas worth mentioning is no lifting gas at all.

350 years ago, a Jesuit priest proposed a vacuum airship. Why use hydrogen or helium when you could use something even lighter—nothing. To this day, the concept has proved impossible. The challenge is that the container must both be strong enough to withstand atmospheric pressure and light enough that the system is able to achieve net lift. Scientists have shown that no homogenous shell of any known material, not even one made of diamond, would be able to meet these requirements. Research has lately turned to non-homogenous honeycomb structures as a possible solution, but nobody has yet produced a design that would work. Even if we could crack this problem and achieve net lift, it’s probable that the structure would be heavier than hydrogen and helium gas.

Finally, we should think a little about propulsion. A floating city would need a way to actively manage its location in space. If required to maintain position against 30-mph winds, a mile-diameter sphere weighing 2 million tons would require about 1.4 GW of propulsion. This is about an order of magnitude more than a 747 uses on takeoff. With adequate energy storage on board, it would be possible to maintain position against such winds for some period of time using only solar panels to charge the batteries. If we want to do it indefinitely, we need some other power source as well as the associated fuel delivery service. The biggest single nuclear reactor that exists today is 1.6 GW. Fusion is more power dense (at the fuel level) than fission, and aneutronic varieties of fusion require less shielding than fission, so it may be the best choice to power station-keeping.

The amount of power required for station-keeping scales with wind speed to the third power, so there is a benefit to allowing the sphere to drift. It might make sense to have enough propulsion for active stabilization and for the city to hold position against a gentle breeze. This would also enable the city to move to a desired location when winds are sufficiently calm. The city might actively ride the winds to stay out of the way of storms where winds exceed 30 mph.

Maintaining altitude amid changes in payload—as human beings get on and off, for instance—could be done primarily using an active buoyancy control system. Essentially, pumps could compress lifting gas into a tank when the payload got too light, preventing the city from rising too high. The pumps could release the compressed gas from the tank into the gas cells when the payload got too heavy. Because the pumps do not work infinitely quickly, vectored thrust from the propulsion system could provide a redundant altitude stabilization system, keeping the city where it should be while the pumps adjust.

Although some of the technologies discussed above are speculative, some version of a floating city—or floating recreational center, which would have fewer resupply requirements—should be possible, even with today’s technology, with enough commitment and fortitude.

By the end of the century, with sufficient technological advances, it could move from theoretically possible to maybe even probable. It’s a good goal to work toward.

This companion piece was written by Eli Dourado, who is also working to create and promote optimism about the future at the Abundance Institute! He can be found promoting progress on his substack and on Twitter/X.

This essay is a nonfiction companion piece to last week’s story, Touch Me in the Third Place, by Taylor Stuckey which can be read here:

The illustrations for Touch Me in the Third Place were created by Colby Green.

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“So Imperceptible a Change” by Colby Green

Molly Gernsback has never made a good film and never will. Her only artistic trait is that knowledge of that fact doesn’t keep her from trying. Just six projects into her career, she’s made a name for herself as a director of movies perfectly crafted for a semi-literate audience too smart for pop films. Everything she makes can only be described, at least by anyone with actual taste, as ‘cute’, before it can be described as ‘good’.

With the release of this year’s Oscar nominations, ever the North Star of the industry’s darlings, Molly is luxuriating in praise for her Best Picture nomination for Titanic Part II, engorged with winking satire and metatextual flair with a silly premise everyone can’t shut up about: The fictional account of a film crew’s tragic attempt to film a sequel to Titanic on a space station, with disastrous and deadly results. Gernsback set out to follow in Cameron’s footsteps and make cinematographic history with the postmodern romantic disaster sci-fi epic being the first major studio film to be shot entirely inspace, which fortunately did not end up like the film within the film. A fresh-faced 108-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio stars as a parodic version of himself as the aging director obsessed with capturing the glory of his past. He’s received his obligatory Best Actor nom. Perhaps this will finally be his second win. Many have already remarked on his new relationship with the latest model, the 23-year-old viral phenom Jocelyn Burns, seen on his arm this week. Leo must have admired Molly’s comparable groping at a past she can never return to.

To see where an ‘artist’ (being generous) is going, you remember where they came from. With all their success, the early work, the student filmography of many directors, even the most celebrated, is rarely ever approached by anyone but devoted fans and self-described cinephiles. Few have seen Molly’s first film, a student documentary with notable connections to her latest hit, an amateur film chronicling her relationship with everyone’s favorite hangout in the clouds, THE THIRD PLACE, itself a metaphorical Titanic with wings, and its greatest muse, Ira Blue.

The first thing we see in ‘Touch Me in the Third Place’ (2084) is a typical establishing shot of hundreds of people, families, groups mingling about on a cloud-kissed summer day touching against the sky. Chunks of buildings perched on the sides of fields of trees, pines, mimicking almost acondensed Central Park with an Upper East and Upper West side. The shot lingers to allow clouds to slither across the frame, conjuring up the image of the entire thing as a colossal Titan, a mile-longnomadic shaft at once grinding against the earth yet so high, an angel’s conflagrant balls could brush against every passenger’s skull, with time left to linger on the foreheads of children and the oxygen-assisted elderly. A literal skyscraper. There is, thankfully, no accompanying soundtrack. Just the local ambiance of the crowds, which isn’t much better on the ears.

We see pans across graffiti on benches and sidewalks, posters, dancers, couples among the open courtyards. Vendors give away their paintings and t-shirt designs at their stalls. It’s controlled chaos in every bazaar, styles and cultural genres shifting wildly across time, but blended over with smooth calm transitions. Every place, every structure has multiple paths of entry. It is utility defying utility. The paths are full of maze-like lies and everyone is forced to know the downloadable map like they know their mother’s face. The trees warn the crowds that the most vital elements of the Third Place are hidden, visible only by dismantling everything, pulling at threads in the recesses. The effect it would all have is grotesque, if it weren’t so banal a choice for an introduction. It’s charming how openly it starts with cliché, aping every girl too attractive to be good at camerawork that wanted to make a moviea bout this cultural touchstone.

For over three long decades, THE THIRD PLACE has been the envy of every trend spot in the country, however much it is deserved. The artists and tech rebels that designed and launched it have thoroughly succeeded in their aim to craft the ultimate community center to end all community centers. It is the last rec center. Chances are, your parents met there, if they are of a certain age and cultural milleu. You were probably conceived up there. Most no longer care about its creators, but the film takes for granted the audience’s supposed knowledge of them.

“The Third Place” by Colby Green

Molly Gernsback skips across Main Street, seeking her first charge. Someone holding a handheld camera tracks behind her. Gernsback sought a guerrilla-style for the shoot with only one crew-member. The camera, and its keeper, enjoy her; a toothy, anxious brunette long-practiced in good-looking. Her bracelets and rings of silver dematerialize and materialize at random intervals. Her cheekbones contain tiny implants that create an illusory effect of contouring and color. Her hair is in an almost semi-conscious state of flux as if the follicles could react to pain when cut. She has a winding track of dancing LED tattoos covering her exposed left shoulder, going down her arm in a sleeve stopping two-thirds before the wrist. When she was sure no one was looking, she would tweak just a little thing on everything about her, a minor hue change to the stars on her collarbone or her bangs just a centimeter longer, so imperceptible a change that you couldn’t be sure she didn’t always look like that. But she made sure the camera never missed a thing.

Before ever making a film, Molly achieved online fame as one of the early young adopters of the now popular procedure known as Angeling, wherein small hermaphroditic sea slugs of the class Gymnosomata are injected into the body, genetically designed to produce and release the metabolite Pteronone and specifically target certain hormones in the body directly, causing targeted growth of the breasts and buttocks over a period of five years at which point the sea angels die and are expelled. She feels resentful towards the fact that her sister also achieved notoriety for Angeling, but to treat a fatal thyroid issue. She felt judged by both the internet and her loved ones for being shallow when they never said a thing.

The first words we hear are Molly off-screen.

“What does The Third Place and Ira Blue mean to you?”

The prelap cuts to Molly sitting on a bench with a stony young man, stony like smooth stone caressed by clear spring water. Algae does not stick to him. He saves all his style for his facial expressions, a tiny bit for his hair and almost none for his everyday serviceable men’s fashion. The captions only identify him as The Tourist.

“Sorry, couldn’t tell you. I’m mostly here for my kid. It’s his first time.”

The Tourist tells Molly that his six-year-old son, Asher, is off with a babysitter somewhere on

the ship. He’s a single dad.

“What do you do?’

“I’m a teamlead for software development. Mostly in Health IT.”

“Where’s his mom?”

“She died just before he turned two.”

She gave it space before continuing.

“I’m so sorry.” Even though there is never any good reason to, she offered up her own tragedy and he exchanged one back, tipping the scales. “My dad died a few years ago too.”

“Condolences. Team Dead Dad.”

He held out his hand for a high-five and she took it.

Molly explains to us that she met The Tourist about half an hour ago and asked him to be her cameraman, and her love interest.

“I get that I’m the weird one, but it still sucks you don’t know the story. When Ira Blue first came to THE THIRD PLACE with the original crew in 2051, she met one of the designers and they fell in love in like a weekend. It ended in tragedy after she became the ship’s muse and came up with most of its best ideas. I want what she had. I want to follow in her exact footsteps and fall in love with a hot guy and capture the whole thing on camera. I think she would love the idea.”

“It sounds like fun.”

Ira Blue likely would have said to Molly that her idea was DOA, as she had neither the charisma to carry the project, nor the talent to make the film work regardless. She would have approved of her taste in men.

The Tourist smiles at us in the way everyone smiles at the camera now, knowing the right way to, although less fine-tuned than most his age. If the background of the film was THE THIRD PLACE, then the foreground was how horny and lonely its principle leads were. While they walked through the park, Molly would occasionally reach behind the camera, giving The Tourist hidden touches or grabbing his hand to pull him along. At least she was smart enough to not ruin the fun by cutting it down with a joke about how hot and straight they both were. She would flip between speaking directly to him or the camera, or narrating over the footage.

“I knew if I wanted to find anyone in the know here, I’d have to go where the beautiful people are. Taking my new friend to B.A.T. would also be the best place for us to flirt. If you can’t have a good date at a bowling alley, then you shouldn’t date, period.” The next scene took us inside the lanes of the only flying cosmic bowling alley in the world, a favorite spot for teenagers, Bowling Alone Together.

~

Joining them was a couple in their 30’s Molly was friendly with, the notorious formerly rightwing cultural critic from Canada, Oscar Kastigan and his thin blonde girlfriend, the actress Therese James, who was making a splash in indie films. The Tourist filmed them stepping up to a sleek white machine giving off a blue light that would scan the shoes they came in with, and then deposit bowling shoes with a similar design. Ira’s greatest contribution to THE THIRD PLACE was the famous rule that there would be no places to buy or sell anything anywhere on the ship. Absolutely everything would be free. Being caught trying to exchange goods or services for money would be akin to being caught masturbating in public, but even more shameful.

After a moment of idling and watching the huddles of young folks drinking, bowling or dancing to the live set performing from across the bar, their ticket for a lane was called. At their table, Oscar took over the conversation while Molly would respond and Therese would smirk, sipping her drink with her legs layed across his lap. The camera was set stationary on the table so that all four of the group were in frame for the static, rather boring shot.

“No one’s worried we’re ever gonna get a McDonald’s up here. But we should absolutely be fucking terrified of the government turning it into a national park.”

“It would completely kill it!”

“Molly, it’s been dead for 20 years. Old people come up here at 7 AM to jog and their fat families come up here to take pictures, run around and scream. No offense.”

The Tourist waved it away. “I didn’t think you meant me.”

“No hate, but once teenage black girls find your secret spot, it’s no longer cool.”

“Isn’t teenage black girls finding your secret spot when it starts being cool?” The Tourist casually fought him and that made Molly smile. Oscar just laughed as she quickly changed the topic.

She obviously didn’t like Oscar but he was good content.

“What do you think Ira would think of how it’s changed?”

“She’d probably be disgusted. When Preepo’s built this place, if they didn’t like you, you didn’t fly. Yeah, okay, everything was free and it’s wonderful, but exclusivity. Gatekeeping. That was the thing. But I’m not saying anything you haven’t heard a million times.”

The Tourist had no idea what he was talking about. “Sorry, ‘Preepo’s’?”

“Pre-Po-Dec’s. They’re the group that designed and built The Third Place, out of a bunch of old abandoned shipping zeppelins.” Molly was embarrassed by his ignorance. She was about to explain but then Oscar did it for her.

“Pre-Post-Decadence was an art movement/collective, started by a bunch of rich New York and LA kids in the late Twenty-Fourties, mostly writers, musicians, actors and people who do what I do.”

“What do you do?”

“Their belief was that beliefs weren’t even a thing anymore, just aesthetics. When the only shit making up an identity are the clothes you wear and which music you listen to, those truly are the most important things in reality. But it fucking sucks, right? We just keep spinning our wheels forever and ever, never doing anything new anymore. And everyone, even normies, had been saying it for like a century at that point, all the post-structuralists. They were mostly inspired by the Neo-Decadence movement of the Twenty-Twenties. They were waiting for a total collapse of all culture, like a total clean slate with a new era of humanity having a completely different way of creating culture. Their idea was to start a movement that knew, even if they couldn’t be alive to see it, they could at least shepherd it and get the world ready. Aesthetic Accelerationism. Do everything they hated about nostalgia and memes and fads… even harder. They were gonna be the last trendsetters and set in motion the death of trends.”

“Looks like it didn’t pan out.” Oscar laughed again. The Tourist was a quaint addition to the film. A blunt outsider to the outsiders, his feet were planted firmly on the ground even at five-thousand feet. The scene ended with him asking them one last question.

“So who’s Ira?”

Oscar smirked and held out his hand to Molly like a gentleman, well aware this was her lane.

“Ira Blue was like the princess muse of the Pre-Po-Dec’s. She was a ‘true artist’ in every sense. She was with them when they first launched The Third Place, and she helped make it famous. No buying or selling was her idea, not to mention, like, so many other amazing designs. She inspired everyone to be their most creative self. I was inspired to become a filmmaker because of her. Everyone remembers her for her wild antics like streaking across the park and always screaming at people, but they all loved her. When she first arrived, she fell in love with one of the original founders of the movement, and after a few years, they broke up and never spoke to each other again. But everything she did made her fabulously wealthy, and she chose to go into isolation. Personally, I believe the theory that she’s secretly some super famous actress living under a different identity.”

Then Therese chimed in for the first time. “Wasn’t she like 15?”

“No, I hate that rumor. It’s not true.” She only faced The Tourist, as if he said it.

“Sorry, it’s what I always heard. That when she joined, all the guys wanted to fuck her and basically passed her around and got her addicted to drugs. I always thought that whole scene sounded like a bunch of bored losers.”

Oscar took a sip of his drink before jumping from that. “And they killed her!”

The Tourist perked up at that. “Like literally?”

“They did not!”

“She had dirt on some of them, like that they raped her. So they threw her off the ship.” He raises a finger then slowly trails it down to the table with a whistle and then exhales a boom.

“Isn’t there a giant wall around the whole thing so you can’t do that, or jump off?”

“Yeah, but if anyone would know a way past that, it’d be them. And they say the whole place is haunted, riiiight Molly?”

Molly rolled her eyes. “Yeah, like her ghost haunts couples on dates and dooms relationships to fail.”

The Tourist chuckled. “Damn, that sucks for us, then.” Everyone but Molly smiled at his joke.

Then he broke the silence. “So, are we gonna actually bowl or…”

~

After a few shots of them group bowling, the film cut to just Molly and the Tourist sitting at a booth in an extremely tiny neon-blasted Chinese restaurant, their legs close enough to lock into each other. The camera rested on the table against the wall, the two of them on each end of the frame and the whole of the restaurant in the background. In the dead-center of frame, a Dali painting was hung. This was the only good shot in the film.

“Fuck them.”

“Is this going in the movie?”

“It’s all going in. Fuck them. They don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Molly pulled out her phone and tweaked the shapes on her arm, just to keep herself busy and distracted. He watched her, as do we, do this for about a minute. When she turns her entire arm the color blue, he suddenly takes it, entranced.

“I first learned about The Third Place from Ira’s posts online. She’d always gossip without naming anyone, or talk about the wild things that happened to her that week. She’d also write really amazing reviews of films or performances or art exhibits. Getting a good review from her was everything. The best posts of hers were from that first year. A lot of them were about her boyfriend, and the way she described their relationship was always so so hot. She said her favorite thing to do was try to talk in between kisses. Like try to say a couple words and he’d keep interrupting her with a kiss. But only if it was spontaneous, not planned. And now to me that’s forever gonna be the hottest thing a couple can do. I’d probably just cum immediately if I did it up here.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. You really love this place.”

“No, not really. I’m actually glad you didn’t get all excited about it. That’s why I wanted your help. I actually… don’t feel much of anything when I’m up here. I wish I could see what she saw. It’s true she had a lot of issues, but everything she represents is really important to art history.”

“I think maybe she’d care more about whether or not she had a good life than what it represented.”

Molly squinted and smiled, like he was a precocious child telling her his dog could talk. “That’s really sweet, but you’re so wrong. The only thing that mattered to her was that. Like I represent stuck young women who refuse to let radical change die. And you represent young men who refuse to let family values die.”

“I don’t care if family values, whatever that means, dies. I care if I die? I care if Asher dies.”

“Okay, I get it. You’re stuck trying to do the twenty-thirties thing, while I’m stuck trying to do the twenty-fifties thing, and everyone else is stuck trying to do the twenty-eighties thing right now.”

“I’m just stuck trying to raise a kid.”

“Ha, see, I set you up! That’s the most twenty-thirties thing you could have possible said.”

“Okay, but could people in the twenty-thirties do this?” He tented his fingers and held out his shoulders, waving his arms into a smooth wave.

“Pfffffft… No, that’s all you!”

“Could they do this?” He brought his left elbow pit to his mouth and blew, expelling a loud fart.

Molly burst into laughter, looking around as she pulled on his hands. “Stop!”

The scene ended on a cute note as they both giggled, but the question remains: What is the point and why should we care?

Molly’s narration clued us into their next destination, where the film took an unexpected turn.

“My friend texted me that some journalist for some website was interviewing her and other people at the Third Place gym.”

Just outside the gym, the Tourist filmed Molly watching the journalist interview an older man. She started by asking him mindless questions about his reasons for visiting The Third Place and his favorite things he’s seen there. Then finally, she asked him who he was planning to vote for in, what was at the time, the upcoming presidential election. As always, the response becomes even more painful in hindsight.

“I shouldn’t bother her when she’s doing her job.”

When she saw the man walk away, Molly walked up to the tall, put-together journalist. Her gaze was friendly, but pointed still. Every person could be something to her. She fixes up her hair, noticing the camera before Molly even gets to her.

“Are you a journalist?”

She smiled. “I am. Just getting a feel for where things are politically. I have a theory there are a lot of people on the right in enclaves up here. May I ask you some questions?”

Molly gestures to the camera. “I’m actually shooting a documentary and doing interviews too! It’s just a lame student film, about Ira Blue’s legacy on The Third Place and art and stuff like that.”

“I love that. The character was certainly more important than the people who created her. You know, all the scummy fascist-lite techists that built it. If Ira was real, I don’t think she’d be very happy.”

“Ira was completely real. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I was under the impression that it was common knowledge that Ira was a made up story by the arts community up here. I thought it was cute, if a little morbid.”

“Vultures coming up here with no clue and disrespecting the culture and turning it into content and politics.”

She shifted, uncomfortable at Molly’s immature ranting, but she let her say her piece.

“Molly, it’s okay.”

“We’re both interviewing people up here, sis. It’s not a competition.”

“That’s completely different! I’m just trying to honor one of my heroes with my crappy student film. You’re working for some media company shoveling propaganda.”

“Sorry, what’s your name again?”

“Molly Gernsback, and please, feel free to write about me, bitch!”

Molly stormed out of frame, the camera holding for a moment, then cutting to black.

“Molly” by Colby Green

~

We join Molly and The Tourist again on a park bench. The blue hue of approaching dusk shades every inch of the île flottante.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“That was pretty crazy.”

She looks up at him and frowns, disappointed with that response. “Isn’t it crazy to be following around a student filmmaker when you have a kid to raise?”

“I’m just trying to have a little fun with a cool girl.”

“This isn’t supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be meaningful.”

Molly lets out a groan, standing up off the bench. “I don’t think this is working, I’m sorry. Call it self-sabotage if you want, but I don’t like feeling like a loser next to you.”

He tried to calm her but it just made her tear up. It wasn’t long before Molly took her camera and as quickly as they had met, they went their separate ways.

~

It was at this moment, when Molly was alone with her camera, that I realized The Tourist would receive a phone call from me.

You see, I am Ira Blue and The Tourist is my son. Watching Molly’s film had not been the most enjoyable experience, but it was an illuminating one. I was always happy to see more of my son even on a screen, and Molly amused me. She knew so much about me from what I wrote and nothing from how I lived. And she knew absolutely nothing about the scene. I had to hold in murmurs of disgust watching her poorly paced, amateur attempt at wringing creativity out of a naive girl’s personal account of my supposed iconography. But I did keep watching. And then my son called.

He told me almost everything. The intimate details he didn’t I could glean from the film. He was very much into her. He only took after me in his adaptability. In every other way, my son and I were very different. I think his practicality was rebellion against my instability.

“She sounds a little nutty.”

“Maybe, but I still really like her. Is that bad?”

“No, that’s good.”

He asked me what he should do, and I told him to give her some time, and if she didn’t come looking for him, he could look for her. He said he wanted to introduce her to Asher.

~

Her film wasn’t over. She meant it when she said she would follow my footsteps. Every hangout spot I posted about, pictures I took. Graffiti I made others do for me. The trees and flowers I planted. She filmed them all, and much more. Street performances and cooks and students doing homework and the stars in the sky. The closest the film ever got to capturing what I felt up there was right then, when Molly stewed in self-hatred.

And then she sat cross-legged in the grass, bikers and couples strolling on the sidewalk behind her. She turned the camera up towards herself, her face right up close to the screen.

“Ira, I really wish I could talk to you. It’s so hard. I never talk about but, I hear things when no one is there. I feel eyes on me all the time. I’m sorry, this is so hard. Nothing I say, is getting through!”

Her words stammered and her breath was shaky. She would wince and pause and sigh. Both silence and speech caused her great pain. Every attempt to be genuine, to say something sincere was threatened to stand down by the knowledge that it would contain an element of performance, of selfdoubt and irony. No matter what she said, it could not stand on its own, no matter how much she wanted it to.

“There’s nothing I can say to you or the camera or anyone that feels real anymore.” She stared at the ground for a long time, thinking and searching. I was tempted to scrub the video forever, but then she spoke.

“I wish he was here.”

~

She found my son, and he was still on the phone with me. He glanced over and smiled at the camera. Just as he hung up, Asher entered the frame, running across the park.

“Ash! Hold up!”

She locked the camera right on Asher as my son grabbed him and walked him closer to her. He wasn’t at all shy in front of the camera, but like their parents, few children ever are anymore.

“Ash, this is my friend, Molly.”

“Hi.”

“Hey, Asher! You’re way cuter than your dad said.” That made him bashful.

The three of them went on a nighttime walk through the park, Molly filming everything Asher did, which was mostly run around and point at art installations he thought looked cool. My son groaned when Asher noticed the pool and begged to go in. When his father refused, Asher became especially grumpy. Asher was very good at chess, especially for a six-year-old, and my favorite shot in the film is the frowned up little face of a child that can only think about the pool staring down at a chessboard across from a cheerful old man happy to be beaten at his favorite game.

At one point, Molly gave the camera to my son, and she ran ahead to join Asher staring up at was likely a plane.

“It’s a rocket!”

Molly giggled, and then after a moment, joined in. “A rocket?!”

“Yeah!”

“Ashy, it’s probably space pirates!”

“Whaaat? It can’t be!” Asher was a kid that would knowingly repeat phrases he saw on TV like ‘Aw, shucks!’ because he thought it made him look cute, and it did.

“They’ve been trying to take over the entire skyship for YEARS! You have to help us find a way to beat them.”

“Okay! You have to help, dad!”

He ran up to join them, and knew in that moment to put the camera not on Asher, but on Molly. The last shot of the film is her looking around the entirety of the park, seeing all of The Third Place for the first time.

~

How perfect and adorable and mediocre, to end the film with a sentimental message about the importance of remembering the simple things like imagination and walks in the park. All it takes is a particularly cute child at play and you can turn the most obvious tropes into transcendent fluff. Even my own grandchild could not save it, and there’s never been and never will be a child cuter.

I attended the premiere of this ridiculous girl’s Titanic ‘sequel’ on my birthday and was given Special Thanks in the credits. The silent gratitude she and I shared at dinner beforehand would have sufficed. She and my son lit up the room, and had become almost as one person, able to turn a dreadful night into a bearable one. And then at so slight a moment I almost missed it, as Molly was fretting with her usual anxious manner about some minutia of the event, my son interrupted her with a spoonful of ice cream at her lips. She smiled and accepted it, and then continued.

As if by instinct, I giggle, touching two fingers to my own bottom lip and suddenly I lose myself. I forget anything I learned, what little I ever did.

When I was little, when I went to the local mall with my mom, we went into an antique store and they had a very large painting. It was Dali’s Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening. I will never forget how much the scene unsettled me: The woman lying naked on a shaft of frigid ice in an empty sea, giant tigers leaping out of the mouths of tigers, leaping out of the mouth of a fish bursting from a citrus fruit like an egg sac, bayonets shooting out of their mouths and pricking her skin. The only part of the painting that didn’t give me such anxiety was the cheerful circus elephant, unless I began picturing too hard its colossal stilt legs reaching all the way down to the bottom of the black ocean and it became nightmarish again. The scene was so real, I imagined what it would feel like to actually be that naked woman on the ice in that moment and how a contented, sexy pose would be the last thing I could want to do in that situation. As a six or seven-yearold, I imagined I’d much rather just scream and cry and the chill that it gives me whenever I think about it or see the painting will never leave me. I could imagine no torment greater than being nude trapped on a tiny frozen island of ice, and still I struggle to imagine one. I think the part that brought the greatest fear was knowing there was no conceivable way I arrived in that situation. I didn’t take a boat, I wasn’t left there and I definitely didn’t swim because I couldn’t swim when I was six. I just woke up and there I was, naked on the ice with tigers leaping at me. Whenever I think about the fear that painting stirs in me, it makes me very happy to be reminded of the power of art on the individual.

I realized I would never see what my son sees in you. I realized I would never know who you are, only then did I knew who you are. I’m in the theater and your film starts and I throw myself into Leo’s acting and in that dark portal into nights and dreams, I blow my pathetic whistle and float on the ice. I just float, not dead here, but alive, slowly forward. When I see you’ve used the painting again, I wonder, did you know? As I watch the space-station explode and the bodies of couples in passionate dying embrace drift out into space, I’m overcome with a feeling that all the artists on THE THIRD PLACE could never give me in all those years: That we’ve avoided disaster, and art will be okay.

I’ll be okay.

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Touch Me In the Third Place is a work of optimistic, realistic scientific fiction by Taylor Stuckey.

Illustrations for this work were created by Colby Green.

Thank you for reading Possbilia Magazine, and watch next week for a nonfiction companion piece by Eli Dourado that accompanies Touch Me In the Third Place.

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Aug 15th, 2064

After Lesath, I decided to take up the friendly offer of Clark, a man who I met while perusing the Recent-History Museum at The Boulton. He invited me to visit TerraMar, his amphibious vehicle startup in Brushcross, Texas.

I arrived yesterday afternoon in the city of Parvis by electric rail and was relieved to see that the station runs a small fleet of self-driving EVs for getting out-of-towners to their destinations. They were kind enough to let me charge my folding electric bike at one of their stations in case I needed it while I was in town. While I waited, I took a stroll around the block, passing by a memory cafe and opting for a refreshing lavender and honey tea from a nitro boba stand on the edge of a public plaza. It was a nice day out, and I enjoyed the shade in this alcove where people came to sit and read or enjoy a picnic.

My journey to a small ranch owned and operated by TerraMar would be a bit of a trek. The first leg would be 25 minutes by EV to the shipping district, followed by another hour in a passenger car on a freight train that makes a routine stop right at their barn. I could more reasonably take the EV all the way in, but I decided to follow Clark’s recommendation that I experience the line.

As the car hummed its way into more sparsely-populated lands, I noticed the shift in architectural styles from the newer trends of Neoclassical Futurism to the retro 2020s style Modern Farmhouse, with much older structures dotted throughout at various stages of refurbishment. Not long after getting settled on the train I noticed something else too - barns. More and more became lots and lots, and by the time I arrived at the TerraMar ranch it was the case that few if any ranch or residence I passed was lacking one.

The ranch was no exception, and offered me insight into the culture of the pastoral yet lively sprawl. The structure that their team works out of was built on the bones of a towering 19th century barn. The foundational frame was a 1-to-1 replacement of its original solid wood beams, and the interior featured a refurbished loft space for coworking above their logistics workspace. The roof above the loft invited light in through large windows of insulated glass. Stalls that had undoubtedly been occupied by animals in its past life now served as storage areas with garage doors for ease of access when it came time to ship. The exterior was made of corrugated metal but was painted red and white in tribute to the iconic image of a classic barn, despite there being no external wood to save from weathering.

According to Clark, the resurgence of barns in recent years could be attributed to their immense value as vessels of personal capital. Much like an automobile serves as an extension of one's personal autonomy—facilitating movement and independence—a barn embodies a similar extension of human will but through spatial and creative domains. In places like Brushcross and throughout rural Texas, barns have been reimagined and revitalized into workshops, startup incubators, and community hubs. These transformations reflect a broader cultural shift back to foundational values of self-sufficiency and innovation. By reclaiming and repurposing these spaces, residents are not only preserving a vital aspect of their heritage but are also reasserting a commitment to the quintessential American ethos of building and reshaping one’s surroundings.

✷

Today I joined Clark and his team in attending the annual Brushcross Innovations Fair, the event behind the timing of my visit.

I found myself at what could be described as a county-fair-meets-hackathon, a bustling, inventive congregation of minds and machines. The fair brought together local pioneers and their creations. Plots were laden with home-engineered gadgets and locally-crafted solutions, from e-vehicle retro mod hotrods to mass-market hyperspectral camera equipment retrofitted onto drones for surveying use.The event’s structure encouraged a unique blend of competition and cooperation, with a raffle to select the host, turning each iteration into a coveted opportunity for barn owners. This setting fostered a culture of mutual education and community, where knowledge - and a potluck meal - was freely exchanged among attendees of all ages.

Among the crowd was Erin, a mechanical engineer with a rogue spark in her eyes. She was showing off her most recent feat of jailbreaking a 2026 John Deere autonomous tractor. As we walked past her display—an earlier model electric tractor now equipped with a user-friendly interface—she shared insights into rural hacking culture, proclaiming that "It's about making technology work for us, not us for it," as she guided me through her modifications. We discussed the tension and balance between manual control and automation, a topic she was passionately pragmatic about, especially in a world leaning heavily towards the latter. She was surprised but pleased to find out that I myself could drive a car manually, since I’d been taught by my parents at the age of 15.

Erin also hinted at her next big project, one that would take her to the industrial gardens of Milwaukee—a venture aiming to blend bold manufacturing advancements with social ingenuity. She said I should come see it, and scribbled down a range of dates and a building number on the corner of my event flier.

As the evening drew to a close, the fair’s atmosphere buzzed with excited chatter about the day’s unveilings. Everyone enjoyed the cider that had been made communally by attendees and participants using a handful of presses brought by locals. Feeling inspired and curious, I made a note to myself to visit Milwaukee soon.

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We welcome you to become a paid subscriber for access to the internal notes behind The Long Way Home: Brushcross, TX.

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The biological faculties we are endowed with define the ways in which we perceive the world.

We experience its myriad colors and hues due to our sensitivity to waves on the visible light spectrum. We are attuned to rustling winds, chirping birds, barks and voices thanks to our eardrums, capable of converting atmospheric wave propagations into interpretable sounds. Over time, we’ve managed to build on top of these natural faculties through the invention of language, producing repeatable sounds that help us communicate across distances, and the invention of writing, converting audible messages into visual ones, which helped us communicate across time.

However, all of these are just the tip of the iceberg. 

So much of the modern world operates in mediums and at scales entirely invisible to us. Whether it’s the ubiquitous radio waves carrying Internet packets or the microscopic transistors interpreting them, humans are deaf and blind to the signals and scopes of modern technologies. 

It needn’t always be this way.

New devices are constantly enabling us to extend our faculties of perception, communication and even manipulation. 

From telescopes that let us see far out into the Milky Way to smartphones or imagined uplinks that can carry our voices thousands of miles, to even robotic arms that can execute our hand movements far beyond where our bodies can reach, we are on a constant mission to perceive and interact with the world in new ways. 

Indeed, as the nature of our interaction with the world changes, so too will our primary methods of sensing and communicating. Imagine, for instance, seeing the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum, being able to visually identify the flow of digital communications, radiation or heat. Imagine being able to peer into the very molecular structure of the objects around you through microscopic vision. Imagine being able to instantly understand the contents of someone’s thoughts without having to hear or read a single sentence. 

While these might seem implausible, or faculties fundamentally unfit for our brains, the reality is that such sensory capabilities are all theoretically possible because of the nature of our brains.

For reasons we cannot yet fully explain, the human brain is a tremendously dynamic and adaptable organ.

Over the course of its lifetime, the brain can do everything from learning how to process data from new input sources to transferring brain functions from one region to another. This feature is called neuroplasticity, and it’s part of the reason that neuroscientist David Eagleman calls the human brain “a general purpose computing device.”

One major clue here is that the cortex appears to be composed of “cortical columns,” or repeating general-purpose learning circuits. Each one consists of the same six or so layers, with the same cell types, and the same pattern of how each layer connects to the others. This circuit is consistent across the cortex, with very few differences between the cortical columns in the visual cortex, motor cortex, auditory cortex, prefrontal cortex, and so on.

As long as you can find some new channel to feed the brain information, the natural circuitry of the brain will take care of the rest.

This phenomenon was first demonstrated in 1969 in a paper called “Vision Substitution by Tactile Image Projection.” In it, researchers used cameras to capture an image, and then reproduced that image through a grid of tactile sensors on a patient’s back. With a bit of practice and time, eventually, patients could begin to distinguish what the camera was looking at by developing a sensitivity to the tactile patterns they felt. In other words, they could learn to see through touch. A contemporary version of this experiment was produced by the company Brainport in 2014. It sought to restore vision to patients who had lost their ability to see after a stroke. They fitted patients with a camera mounted on a pair of glasses, and attached the image feed to a multi-electrode array placed on the patient’s tongue. Just as in the example with the haptic grid, in time, the brain began to translate the electrical stimulation on the tongue into legible images, enabling patients to see through their tongues. 

The inherent plasticity of the brain alongside increasingly broad and miniaturizable sensing and communicating devices allows for a near-infinite number of ways for the brain to perceive physical phenomena and interact with data.

After all, the true nature of the world is an enigma, interpretable to us only by the narrow sensory channels we’ve been endowed with.

There is a very broad range of applications of this kind of technology; it’s not hard to argue that writing, sign language, and data visualization are all much older and more mundane technologies that work via similar principles, even if they are much more “low-tech.” In Ponds, a more social form of the technology is emphasized, focusing on personal communication.

It could be that in the not-so-distant future, artists and observers won’t be limited to the instruments of paint or pianos, but could very well be producing works by manipulating the interactions of radio waves, dabbling on the infrared spectrum, making music through fluctuations in magnetic fields.

Perhaps, in a time when we have a lot more choice over exactly how our eyes can see and ears can hear, we will come to truly understand the nature of the phrase beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.

This companion piece was written by Anna-Sofia Lesiv, who writes for Contrary’s Foundations and Frontiers publication.
Her personal website can be found here, and can be found on Twitter/X as well.

The art for Ponds was created by Michael Simmons.

This essay is a nonfiction companion piece to last week’s story, Ponds, by Orion Ruffin-Green, Ponds can be read here:

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“The Ponds in Our Eyes” by Michael Simmons

Albeit he assured Iulian that the modification was a simple one, his incredible physicist of a husband had worked it out so that they would always be in sync, so that he would never be late. And, because he was a decent father who loved speaking with his daughter, who loved to peer into that swift and silly mind of hers, he never was. He awoke a few seconds before her message arrived upon the small uplink he kept in his chest pocket, right under the rib that Nora would softly pat every time she wanted to speak to him. The uplink was a simple recording device; Nora and he would relay messages through it; a received message would galvanise a simple haptic output – for him, this was a patting sensation, the exact rhythm and similar weight of Nora’s small fingers. For Nora, it was a haptic interpretation of his whistle, one of her favourite sounds, one of the first she had ever heard. It was easy for his incredible physicist husband, Dr Casper Willof, to calculate the delay between the two; Iulian always told him where the Attas were performing their work, which was typically within a particular sector of the Beltway. Iulian did not like to stray far from home, from the two pieces of his heart.

“It’s bedtime, Baba,” began Nora’s little broadcast, sleepiness and excitement equally colouring her voice, “but I really, really, really want to tell you a story!”

“A short story,” Casper reminded her, softness belying the firmness Iulian knew shone through his thundercloud eyes.

“A short story! Okay, today, I found a fruit in the word search at school, and nobody else found it! It was... wait, per-cinnamon?”

Iulian could hear Casper biting back his laughter as he amended, “Persimmon, baby.”
“Per-cinnamon! That’s what I said, silly!”

Iulian grinned in the darkness, glee trickling down his cheeks as he listened to Casper try and reconcile what he knew to be true with what Nora believed. Iulian nodded when Casper surrendered; he’d been working on getting the physicist to prioritise Nora’s growth over her being correct, and was proud to hear Casper take a deep breath and smile, and let Nora be right.

“Baba, I love you! I’m going to dream a pretty head for my statue, so make sure you sleep so you can catch it, okay? Good
morning!”

Iulian kissed the uplink in lieu of his sweet daughter, who knew now that her Baba would receive the message upon waking up for his daily duties. He recalled when, just a few months ago, that notion had eluded her; she would wish him a good night, no
matter where he was dispatched. Iulian and Casper, asking Casper’s mother for ideas shortly thereafter, painted a diagram on Nora’s wall to help explain the situation.

“So, when Baba is on this side,” Casper explained, “he will always wake up after you. But when he’s on this side, he’ll wake up before you!”

“Baba is weird,” Nora would giggle. “How can he wake up before and after me? Will we ever wake up at the same time?”

For the sake of ease, her fathers fibbed.

“He’s just so weird!”

“I am, I am...”

The three of them giggled. They ate dinner. They cleaned their teeth. They went to sleep, a pile in the den. Nora would sleepily touch Iulian’s face as he kissed her farewell. Casper would assure Iulian that this would be the time he found that missing
piece of Nora’s little statue. Iulian would hope fervently so, related to his husband through a shy, small smile, which Casper would kiss before bidding his sweet scavenger husband farewell. Iulian, taking the lev to the station from which he and his crew of fellow Attas would depart, always shook his head at the idea that what he did was scavenging. Dismantling defunct rings throughout the Beltway was, to him, as integral a part to society as fungi to the forests his crew’s namesake used to flourish in. Carve away the decrepit to make way for the growth; such was nature. And he and his crew implemented a similar measure in space as their own species made their way throughout the solar system.

In the present, Iulian smiled. He pressed the broadcast button on his uplink and whispered to Nora about his dreams, and how full they were of her laughter and statues. Iulian recalled when the uplink was first patented, and the strife caused the inventor, Celadon Arocho. The company she had worked for at the time had tasked her with developing a means of storing information as it was collected. She had found that her colleagues – for whom the tool was crafted – benefited from having an alert once a note was saved to the department’s cloud. Not only did such an alert ensure that each employee knew when the notes were ready for listening to; they also increased the likelihood that the notes would be heard and read. The more immediate and tangible the alert, she found, the less the time between publication of the note and its examination. Having a collection of antiquated controllers and driving
simulators, leftovers from the heirlooms dispersed amongst her and her siblings, she tested various forms of feedback – visual, auditory, and haptic; she found greatest success with the last, and thus incorporated it into the tool, to which she referred as an “uplink,” as it “links us personally.”

When Arocho, feeling unappreciated at her job with the company, went to start her own, her former employer sought to claim the patent for themselves. It took much of a decade, but Arocho stood victorious after several petty and greedy but ultimately
detrimental gambits. The company she’d left was nothing but a footnote in many management students’ textbooks in the section on poor business practices. Five models into her uplink enterprises, Arocho opened up the software layout so that others could add to it as they wished. Casper seized the opportunity, purchasing both himself and Iulian a pair of discount Gemini v3 uplinks, which were specifically paired for spouses and sold at discount on a rose-coloured holiday only the businesses celebrated.

Iulian rose to his feet and stretched, prepared himself for the day. He and Saret were paired, as they were the ones most familiar with the stowing of rarities and creature comforts. They were, as decided by their foreman, the most meticulous of the crew,
meant more for the tedious jobs than the massive excisions. Truthfully, Saret and Iulian were both a bit older and more self-sufficient in their work. They were requested often by the executives who owned the companies who built the rings; Saret was masterful at stowing fabric-based works, whereas Iulian could carve an anatomically correct heart from glass. It was an administrative jest that whenever the executives decided to relocate their offices, they would send Saret and Iulian. The other Attas were sent along for fuel efficiency.

Saret greeted Iulian as he arrived at the room she’d started working.

“Still haven’t found the one that sings to you?” Saret asked, referring to the piece of Nora’s statue he sought.

Iulian shook his head.

“Maybe today, kind hunter. Maybe today.”

Iulian grinned. Saret liked to reference old films.

The two worked for hours, stowing away the items they were ordered to, taking a gander at those which weren’t on their lists. Company policy was to destroy or repurpose those items which were not requested. More often than not, specialists like Iulian and Saret would keep the refuse which would prove useful with their own passion projects. Saret had created some interesting art installations using the fabrics she recovered from executive suites; silk tents, linen life-size figurines, dresses and coats and capes and other such fashion comprised of the artwork which inspired them. Iulian had always been into sculpting, but never on a massive scale. His miniatures adorned many desks and dressers and doors throughout his neighbourhood. Whereas Saret would express something within herself, Iulian always aspired to express something within others, some trait of theirs which defined that person’s relation to him.

In some instances, this made Iulian so frustrated, though he would never admit it aloud. Though Nora was a genetic blend of him and his husband, it was always Casper to whom people instinctively likened Nora’s features. And this was accurate – Nora had Casper’s button nose, had his small and round ears, had his dark complexion and immaculate smile. If her growth spurts were any indication, she would have Casper’s height, though he was the only one in his family who retained their wiriness into adulthood. There was so much of Casper’s influence on Nora outwardly that people tended to ignore the semblances she had with Iulian. His propensity for silent grandiosity, his demure silliness, the seriousness with which he crafted his art, the intensity of his stare – her eyes. Casper had given Nora all her phenotype except for her eyes.

“Those are ours,” Iulian’s mother had rasped, holding Nora in her frail, shuddering arms. “Those are the ponds we brought from home.”

Iulian’s mother had dwelt on Earth for most of her life, in a small neighbourhood built near a lush wood. Tucked in the depths of this wood was a pond she would visit every day of her youth. Her father had carried her there shortly after she was born and
told her the story of that pond, that it had gazed into the eyes of a thousand of her ancestors, and hoped that it would gaze into the
eyes of a thousand more.

“The trees lean over to share their secrets,” he explained to her then, “and the pond stores their secrets in our eyes, so that we might see the beauty of the world everywhere.”

As she perished, quivering in the hospital she always claimed far too frigid, she whispered into Iulian’s ear with her final breaths, “I gave you the ponds, Iulian; you must give them to Nora. Promise me, you’ll keep them in our eyes, so that... when we return...”

He did. Iulian was a kind son to his mother. She died four months after Nora was born.

“Is this what Baba’s mommy had in her eyes?” Nora asked one day, flipping through one of Iulian’s books on various stones, minerals, and crystals. “Is this what makes our eyes so green, Baba?”

Iulian glanced at the page, saw that Nora was pointing to a cross-section of jade.
“It is,” he answered, placing a kiss upon Nora’s hair.

“There was none,” Iulian remarked when Saret asked him of his success. He’d joined her in the next office, where she’d waited for his assistance, needing to wind a massive and heavy scroll tightly enough to fit into its storage container.

Saret mused, “The execs always want to tie themselves to something beyond our reach, don’t they? It’s always the past, giving themselves a sense of... inevitability.”
Iulian nodded as he held the ends of the scroll together so Saret could slide the container over and seal it.

“You would think they wouldn’t abandon their own mythos so quickly to lesser hands, though.”

Iulian grinned. “They use ours to keep theirs pristine.”

“Ha! Sure, sure! They’re too feeble to heft about their own grime!”

The artisan Attas chuckled amongst themselves a moment before tuning into the broadcast sent throughout the ring, an alert to the presence of the first cargo shuttle.

Saret sucked her teeth. “Already? We’ve barely had time to clear one room...”

“The children sounded busy,” Iulian offered, remarking upon the boisterousness of the ones deconstructing rooms below the executive offices.

The two hoisted the containers they had filled to the loading bay, within which the first cargo shuttle sat. Pater and her cousin, Selenite, loudly laughed as they exited the shuttle, continuing their conversation until they saw the Attas arriving with their
small loads.

“Delicates?” Selenite inquired, nodding at the pair.

“Premium ones,” answered Saret, earning a sardonic whistle of admiration from Pater.

“They always keep the best for themselves, ah?” she observed with a wink. “Closest to us; we’ll keep the big stuff in the back.”

“Hi, Iulian,” greeted Selenite as she offered to take his box.

“Did Lorelei like her shell replica?” he asked her, watching as she slapped on the magnetic tape which would keep the box from shifting too much during transport.

Selenite beamed as she twirled, emphatically relaying the immense mirth with which Lorelei was filled upon receipt of the gift Iulian had made for her birthday. Selenite had mentioned her daughter only twice to the sculptor, but the sheer volume of
information Iulian had gleaned from those fleeting dialogues had filled him with such inspiration that he stayed up one night, weaving together a shell from the memory of his parents’ family photograph albums and the broken sandstone replica of an exec’s
fourth ex-spouse.

The rest of the Attas started arriving with their loads of various cubed metals, stacked screens, and other miscellaneous office supplies which had been mounted and left in the way of the crew. Saret and Iulian took their presence as an indication to return
to their tasks, and so they started making their way around the halls to where they had been storing the scrolls. It was as they were passing a hall that Iulian saw it, the glittering wall. At first, he continued on his path, the transfixion not settling in, but a song snared his feet, bound him to the spot, reversed his gaze and gait and set him towards the glittering wall, a strange vision on an otherwise tepid ring.

At first, Iulian couldn’t understand what he was seeing, having no framework for such a scene embedded in his memory. As its commissioner had, Iulian found himself drawn the centre of both the room and the wall. The art before him was divided in twain, parallel to its bewildered viewer. The immense adornment matched the length of the table which rose from the floor behind Iulian as his body temperature registered on the sensors surrounding him; fourteen could comfortably sit at this table with no threat of touching elbows. From behind Iulian erupted a circular light, hurling a silhouette of his head and shoulders onto the image with little effect on the art as a whole. Its massivity impressed Iulian; it was, however, the detail which captivated him, which bound him to the spot, his unknowingly ravenous eyes devouring the subtle variations in depth throughout. Iulian recognised, having seen similar instances in the books his parents had inherited from theirs, as well as within the projections used in the geography classes he took before he moved to the planet’s surface, this to be a meticulous rendering of an elevation map, but he could not place the location it detailed.

“She has one built in every office she inhabits,” Saret explained to the mystified Iulian. He jumped, having been so captivated by the art that he had missed her entrance. She grinned, watching him recover; she continued, “It’s the only reason she never puts it on the list. A piece of her ancestral home. She’ll have this one burned before installing the new one, a perpetuation of her family emblem.”

“Where was she from?”

Saret, who was leaning on the bare wall behind Iulian, pointed her lips towards podiums clustered in the corner opposite herself. “Same as the stone used to make those unlisted items, I imagine.”

Iulian stepped aside of the projection and blinked a couple of times, clearing his the light from his eyes and, upon recognition of the particular stone capping the otherwise metal and silicone stand, filling them with mirthful tears.

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Ponds is a work of optimistic, realistic, scientific fiction by Orion Ruffin-Green.

Illustrations for this work were created by Michael Simmons.

Thank you for reading Possbilia Magazine, and watch next week for the nonfiction companion piece that accompanies Ponds.

We welcome you to subscribe for access to additional art, interviews with our contributors, and more behind-the-scenes content!

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We welcome you to become a paid subscriber for access to internal notes and a behind-the-scenes look at concept art for TAEPDECK BRITANNICA

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The year is 2056. AI-powered robotic legions hurtle across a vast battlefield in a clash of startling proportion and lasting international consequences. The new face of war has arrived.

“Legions” by Andres Osorio

The world sat on the collective edge of its chair. On either side of a battlefield nearly fifty-eight miles square, the forces of the Russian Federation faced off against those of NATO-backed Ukraine. 

The previous Russo-Ukraine war had ended in 2024, leaving deep scars in the Ukrainian psyche and continued territorial insecurity for Russia. In the intervening years, Putin — still alive, allegedly, now at the incomprehensible age of 103 — had made do with incursions into Georgia, Belarus, and North Korea.

But Russian preemptive defense was still top of mind, and without a more dramatic change in international affairs, a return to Ukraine was all but inevitable.

How exactly Putin had clung to power was a matter of substantial speculation. Many people believed that Cryo-Putin, reverse-aged with deepfakes to a healthy 68 years old in the media, had died years before. Yet the foreign policy of Russia seemed to indicate otherwise.

Now, arrayed across the field of battle, were two truly modern armies. Russia and NATO had fully absorbed the visions of war born in the 2020s, when AI first came to deserve its name. Russia, and Ukraine as NATO’s proxy, had invested in AI military intelligence and drone swarms, robots soldiers and automated cyberhackers.

It was promising to be a clash on an unparalleled scale, at least in the new modern age of robo-war.

* * *

War had changed dramatically in the past few decades. Scholars would trace the roots of the change to the world wars and the excessive human cost of conflict. In the popular imagination, however, modern war was born on the battlefield in Liechtenstein.

Liechtenstein was an unlikely place for innovation, least of all in military conflict. As a microstate with special tax arrangements for European retirees and less than forty-thousand residents, few would have anticipated the events of late 2031.

A few years earlier, the Sovereign Military Hospitalier Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and Malta had seen fit to create an arrangement with the House of Liechtenstein which would provide them with living space of their own.

The Knights of Malta, as they were often known, was a sovereign order. Not a nation per se, but sovereign nonetheless, acknowledged by the UN, and capable of issuing its own passports, coinage, and titles. Its thirteen thousand members were fiercely independent, and its loss of a home to Napoleon in 1798 was a persistent sore spot.

It was thus seen to be a tremendous boon when some micronation enthusiasts brokered a series of conversations with the House of Liechtenstein. The Prince and Regent of Liechtenstein was an ambitious man, and in conversation with the Prince and Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, both saw an opportunity to expand their sovereignty.

The deal was simple. The Knights of Malta would arrange a grant and the House of Liechtenstein would give the Knights control over a small piece of territory. Money for land. Liechtenstein would look — and actually be — progressive, pushing the envelope on the topic of sovereignty, while the Knights of Malta would have a home again.

The agreement was executed by a simple handshake, Liechtenstein and the Knights each relying on the others’ sense of honor to uphold the spirit of the deal. It made little news at the time, outside breathless coverage by the few publications devoted to charter cities and microstates.

Yet all was not well, as just a few years would reveal. The Knights wanted to “rule” their land; Liechtenstein wanted them merely to “control” it. Liechtenstein wanted to levy taxes; the Knights were willing to pay “fees” in the amounts agreed upon, but only if the payments were acknowledged as freely given.

To outsiders, these were trifling verbal disagreements. To the conflicting parties, they were core to the concept of sovereignty, which had been the point of the deal in the first place. Debates wore on, the Pope got involved, and the Knights hunkered down on land they had now grown quite attached to.

Neither party wanted the PR disaster of being seen bickering with another ancient order over a disagreement no one would understand. Yet public relations was secondary in an absolute sense to duty, and the labyrinthine requirements of each’s codes of honor interfaced strangely, computing a result no one could anticipate.

It was thus with great surprise that after more than three years of bitter interchange, the Prince and Regent of Liechtenstein and the Prince and Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Hospitalier Order, etc., of Malta publicly declared that they would resolve the dispute through a trial by combat.

The world was even more surprised when NVIDIA and Raytheon announced themselves as sponsors, and the combatants announced their plan to stream the entire battle live.

The Prince of Liechtenstein’s PR team had planned carefully. It was essential to avoid the appearance of antiquity; thus the trial would be conducted using the most advanced military technology available. It was also important to avoid critique; thus it would have to be the leaders who fought, not seconds.

The fact that the Prince was in his sixties and the Grand Master in his seventies only simplified matters. Each would command a robot army. Each would stand fully armored, in protective mech suits. Victory required capturing — not killing — the other. Technology, valor, and humanity, broadcast live to the entire world.

Behind the spectacle and glamor, however, were the reality of the stakes. The Prince and Grand Master had publicly committed, in front of the world, to conditions that would shape the future of their polities. With the world watching and the necessity of honor inviolate, the outcome of the battle would be binding.

Neither Liechtenstein nor the Knights of Malta had much budget for armed conflict. Liechtenstein had abolished its military in 1866; the Knights’ own modest military corps had served as a medical or paramedical unit in the Italian army since 1909. Sponsors took care of the shortfall, with Boeing, Anduril, Tesla, and Boston Dynamics joining the fray.

The result was a battle and media event that did not disappoint. The Grand Master’s army of modified bomb disposal robots and self-driving anti-aircraft batteries met the Prince’s drone battalion and leaping robotic landmines in front of 4.5 billion viewers, the third largest global audience for a single event up to that point. The Grand Master was captured, the Knights defeated, and the only person injured was the Prince, who slipped out of his mech suit when disembarking.

It was another four years until this trial by battle, robot version of capture-the-flag was tried again on the world stage. This time it was in Spain, with a new generation of Basque separatists demanding independence.

The idea was first floated on Joe Rogan Redux, where the host remarked to a guest that if the separatists were really serious, they should challenge the Spanish government to a duel Liechtenstein-style. Several separatist groups, brimming with youth and bravado, responded to the podcast saying of course they would fight, if only the government had the pelotas for it.

To their surprise, the Spanish government did have the pelotas. Or at least, its incentives were unusually aligned. The military wanted to test their technology and retain battle-readiness without having to fight a costly war. Policy wonks thought negotiation and limited conflict could bring extremists to the table and provide an outlet for “youthful energy.” The Spanish prime minister was the deciding factor, and he was up for re-election.

Negotiations proved difficult, with every point debated: size of battlefield, victory conditions, and most importantly, what would happen if each side won or lost. The negotiation seesawed back and forth between cooperation and brinksmanship, both sides making concessions, until finally the terms of battle were decided.

The Spanish government and the Basque separatists retained many aspects of the original Liechtenstein v. Knights encounter, including limitations on conflict and humane victory conditions. Modifications were made to account for the circumstance, permitting multiple combatants, lethal force outside of designated safe zones, and champions fighting in place of heads of state.

The conditions of conflict were announced publicly and the technology companies and arms dealers of the world raced to equip both sides. Fifty members of the Spanish army would face off against fifty separatists, each controlling one of two formidable robot armies, spread over a space of nearly two square miles.

The battle itself was mildly disappointing. The separatists’ electronic AI hacker army and drone swarm kamikazes disabled or destroyed half of the governments’ clunky steamroller robots, but only half. The government closed in on the separatist generals and the fight was over.

Unlike in Liechtenstein, this battle saw casualties. Three soldiers from the Spanish government side were killed after straying outside of the safe zone, and two separatists were killed inside the safe zone when their equipment malfunctioned.

The event did drive traffic, though, with 1.7 billion viewers, just shy of the 2030 FIFA World Cup and landing squarely in the top 20. It also yielded results: the separatists were demoralized, and most of their energy now poured into planning a rematch rather than following the path to real violence.

Other copycat events took place over the intervening years, but it would not be until 2046, eleven years later, that the true potential of limited robo-war began to emerge. Tensions between Israel and Iran had finally boiled over, and satellite imagery showed both countries preparing for a full-scale conflict.

The buildup on both sides was especially worrying because Iran now had nuclear weapons, at least according to the best-informed voices. Israel, of course, had had them for almost a century.

It was thus a matter of worldwide relief when Israel proposed that rather than all-out conflict, both countries demarcate a battleground — Syria was willing to host — and settle their differences the new-fashioned way. Which meant: cyber robot AI wartime.

Gone were the safe zones; anything in the battlefield was considered fair game. Gone were corporate sponsorships and comparisons to the World Cup — this was a deadly serious matter. Preparations on both sides were intense, Unit 8200 for Jerusalem and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Cyber Security Command for Tehran.

The political and military balance was complex. The purpose of war is, to some extent, to reduce uncertainty around who would prevail in an actual conflict. In theory, a limited, representative war could accomplish just that, at substantially lower cost.

Yet an intentionally limited engagement could always spill over into a full-scale war. It was thus to each side’s advantage to arrange a cyber duel that occupied just the right percentage of each side’s resources. Too low and it might not be representative. Too high and a crushing loss might leave the losing side undefended.

There was also the possibility of subterfuge, just like in any conflict. A country could conceivably play weak in robo-war to entice an enemy to mistakenly extend beyond the limited battleground. Or a country could put everything into the smaller war, hoping to disguise the weakness this would leave at home.

Each side thus had to consider whether the other side was treating the smaller battle as a distraction, or prelude, or the actual encounter, and whether each would believe the other’s assurances, or would make false assurances hoping to be disbelieved.

Indeed, the entire apparatus of statecraft was in operation from the beginning, Israel and Iran seeking to exploit every aspect of the process to weaken the enemy and seek advantage. Negotiations to distract and confuse, genuine attempts to extract concessions, and electronic sabotage meant to degrade each other’s systems before the battle even began.

It was understood on all sides that the zone of conflict would be bathed in signals from other countries, the US, China, and Russia expected to play a role, even while everyone denied it. Robots would be hardened against interference, and in many cases operate autonomously. Internet and cell phones would not operate; jamming would be ubiquitous. Drones and robots, flyers and diggers, systems reinforced with concrete and steel, resistant to heat and depleted uranium.

At the same time, the world watching, cheering for one side or another, for the two hundred men and women who would command the robot army for Israel and the two hundred men who would fly drones and pilot machines for Iran. Joining the human fighters would be thousands of robots and countless AI programs, viruses, and intelligent malware.

Limited cyberwar, as carried out now in more and more contexts, also offered a way out for those who did not actually want to fight a full war. Iran in this case, despite its rumored nuclear arsenal, was still importantly outgunned. It thus was possible — though may never be known for sure — that Iran accepted Israel’s proposal in order to save face and absorb a less costly defeat.

The four hundred combatants occupied positions on either side of a sparsely populated region in Syria. Nineteen square miles had been chosen for the battleground, civilians relocated, abandoned houses dotting the landscape. Makeshift fences with electronic sensors ringed the zone, with a buffer outside of nearly half a mile. Israel and Iran were granted safe transport to and from the battlefield, and worldwide peace organizations cut Syria a fat check.

The battles in Spain and Liechtenstein had lasted a few hours each. Israel v. Iran was expected to last weeks. Munitions and provisions were stored in fortified bunkers; restocking from the outside was not allowed. Real-time satellite images were broadcast live to the internet and media outlets were gearing up for twenty-four hour coverage and total market saturation.

As agreed, each side had been given exactly one hundred hours to enter its side of the battlefield, dig its fortifications, and prepare its offense and defense. The hours and minutes ticked away, and the world held its breath for the beginning of limited release armageddon.

The battle began with a simultaneous missile volley from both sides, filling the air with smoke and fire. One by one, reliable information sources were knocked out. Satellites couldn’t see, electronic sensors on the perimeter went dark. Eventually there was so much noise and static the only reports from the battlefield were coming from the Israeli and Iranian Ministries of War.

Israel and Iran, each with their own audience, pressed the media front mightily. Israel showed internal electronic footage and scans depicting their military robots crushing Iranian drone ships and micro-tanks underfoot. Iran cried foul and deepfake, and countered with its own depictions of Iranian valor, even despite overwhelming odds.

The outcome of the fight was the main question of popular interest. Military observers, however, were more concerned with whether either Israel or Iran would choose to go nuclear. Theorists proposed that in the face of defeat, either side might choose to destroy the entire battlefield, a sort of Simultaneous Assured Destruction. Triggering a SAD was considered poor sportsmanship, and environmentally damaging as well, but each might go ahead anyway and try to blame it on the other.

Days wore on, and as the smoke cleared it was apparent that Israel was winning. The victory conditions however were complex, and of the twenty-eight outcomes covered in the negotiation, Iran’s action still could decide between four of them.

Casualties were uncertain. Israel reported that forty-seven of its soldiers were down and twenty-nine unaccounted for. Iran did not give estimates. The number of soldiers left was unclearly related to battle outcomes, though, as between 20% and 60% of each side’s forces were fully automated, and as soldiers fell the robots would often fight on.

Finally, seven days in, the battle was over. US-Israeli computer worms had cracked the encryption on a set of Iranian control systems — somehow, despite the systems being airgapped. The Iranian defenses, already degraded substantially, collapsed completely and its remaining soldiers stood down.

Fans of Israel celebrated, glasses were raised and heroic moments recounted. The real test, however, was whether Iran would accept its defeat, and Israel its limited victory.

Weeks passed, and then, twenty-two days later, the prime minister of Israel and the president of Iran declared a full cessation of hostilities. Satellite imagery confirmed the demobilization and people in American and European capitals poured into the city streets.

While defeated, Iran had done better than expected, and the outcome now called on both countries to make changes. Costly changes, yes, though less costly than war.

* * *

The minutes counted down, and the second Russo-Ukraine war commenced.

Russia had opted for a larger battlefield. In return, Ukraine had pushed for smaller numbers of human combatants, in hope that its very best could command an automated army better than Russia’s.

It was thought Russia would focus on ground forces, as it largely had over the past several decades, aiming if necessary to outlast its enemy, rather than strike and win outright. Ukraine had thus prepared accordingly, with armor piercers and nimble low-flying explosive droneships.

Russia, though, had learned its lesson from its previous few wars, and pivoted hard on military strategy as the new front of limited robo-war opened up. With decentralized swarms and ‘bots that operated like fortified battering rams, with laser beams projecting an enormous Cryo-Putin head onto the smoke in the battlefield, this was a Russia no one had ever seen before.

The push for more space had thus been a ruse. Russian forces burst from their camp and made a blitzkrieg run for the Ukrainian base. Ukrainian operators, scratching their heads at what their electronic sensors told them, expected the Russian forces to reach the midway point and then stop. But they just kept coming.

Recovering too late, Ukraine rushed to reprogram its drones and consolidate defenses. But the Russian missile bots and close-range targeting algorithms, complete with laser-projected psyops, could not be stopped, to the shock and dismay of viewers worldwide.

Analysts would later note that the Russian victory indicated Russia’s amenability to limited conflict and that economically, it made sense for Russia to embrace this new and cheaper form of war.

In the meantime, there was the embarrassing and difficult fact that Russia had won rather decisively. Yes, some of its robots had gone haywire and done tens of millions of dollars of damage outside the demarcated zone. But that did not seem sufficient reason to annul or resist the result, which was that Ukraine was now supposed to hand over to Russia territorial control of one of its provinces.

Viewers everywhere knew what was supposed to happen next. The alternative was an escalation of unknown magnitude. Russia was ready to accept its victory, restoring more of its original USSR territory and giving it a larger buffer against NATO.

What did a Russian victory portend? Commentators conjured visions of a new Napoleon, a new Caesar or Alexander, seeking to conquer the world one robo-battle at a time. Precedent was being set, and the more deeply it became entrenched, the more a deviation would signal cause for real war.

Real war. Of the two-hundred and eighty two soldiers in Russia v. Ukraine, ninety-seven of them had died. Yet now the political fate of almost two million people was to be determined, certainly for the worse. With no real plans to the contrary, Western words of defiance fell flat, and the machinery of government and bureaucracy set in motion to effect a peaceful transition of power.

It was unexpected and tragic. Though for all that, the Western world slept easier, even in defeat. There would be future opportunities for victory and glory, as the great game of geopolitics assumed its new form.

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Story Art

by Andres Osorio

“The Prince of Liechtenstein”

“Proxy War Technician”

“Cyper Putin”

Limited Warfare

a companion piece by Ben Landau-Taylor

In addition to the physical, mechanical, and electronic, war also involves social technologies. Some, like the use of champions and trial by combat, are the province of myth or have played a relatively small role historically. The idea of limited conflict, however, is a social form or technology with a serious history.

When fighting wars, societies can deploy more or less of their resources, armies can target or spare civilians and infrastructure, and leaders can pursue permanent conquest of the enemy or limited concessions from the opposing government. Escalation in one area usually comes with escalation in all areas; the opposite is true as well.

Modern readers will be most familiar with the opposite of limited conflict, namely, total war. Our template for this is the Second World War, which saw historically unprecedented mobilization, industrial-scale atrocities against civilians by all sides, and beleaguered armies fighting on until they lost all ability to resist. It ended with the unconditional surrender of the Axis nations, which had their political systems completely remade in the image of their conquerors and remain militarily occupied to this day.

By contrast, the European wars of the 18th century were very limited. The Seven Years’ War of 1756-1763 is representative. While there was large-scale mobilization, soldiers generally did not target civilians. They mostly obeyed the laws of war, and armies would often surrender if a lost battle or two put them in a poor situation. At the end of the war, most of the conquered territories were returned to their previous rulers, with the major powers ceding to each other only some overseas colonies.

Limited war for limited aims is a fairly stable equilibrium. Achieving it depends on the prevailing culture, political stakes, and decisions of key individuals. If we want militaries to limit the means of war, statesmen and diplomats must limit the aims of war. When a government is losing, if it has good reason to believe its adversaries will accept limited concessions, it will usually abide by the result. If an adversary insists on deposing their foe’s government, whether in service of conquest or ideological goals, the underdog will almost always escalate rather than concede.

Culture and technology both determine, to a degree, the feasibility of limited conflict. The culture of the Enlightenment, with its focus on ideals and ideology, helped contribute to the rise of the mass idealistic army, first constructed by Napoleon. Such armies are difficult to deploy for limited aims, and their use by Napoleon and later in the World Wars led respect for the laws of war to break down and tens of millions of deaths.

Nuclear weapons led to the return of limited war, under the threat of mutually assured destruction. The Cold War thus saw the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. build nuclear arsenals and contemplate using them against enemy cities en masse, though in practice limit their globe-spanning conflict to numerous smaller proxy wars.

War need not be fought to the bitter end. Culture has changed and new technologies, especially the internet, have made worldwide communication and commentary about war possible. While belligerents even of limited wars are unlikely to restrict themselves to sportsmanlike rules such as designated battlefields or limits on their forces, future wars could nevertheless be decided with relatively little loss of human life, if someday in the future the best weapons systems should be mostly autonomous. Whether people will recognize the feasibility and benefits of limited war, and the changes to our expectations that will require, is something time will tell.

A Conversation with Christian Wolff

Our editors Charles Rosenbauer and Olli Payne find out Christian’s motivation for writing Cyber Robot AI Wartime and his thoughts on why limited warfare is a good path for humanity.

0:00 - Inspiration behind the story and the title
3:11 - The Realistic
8:46 - The Optimistic
13:39 - The locations & how we adopt limited warfare
20:25 - The medium of Sci-Fi
25:33 - Public perception of the story
33:54 - Christian’s writing process; Humans and technology
44:25 - What we’d like to see in upcoming stories
54:58 - Christian’s favorite sci-fi & unconventional technologies

Concept Work

by Andres Osorio

“Taking the Field”

“Cyber Robot AI”

Thank you for reading Possibilia Magazine 🚀

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To all of our innovators, inventors, creators, explorers, scientists, artists, and all in between…

…to our friends and readers who will shape the future:

Welcome to Possibilia, where together we will explore possible futures through literature, article, and art - most importantly, through the lens of optimistic, realistic, scientific fiction.

But first, some words from our editors on the motivation behind such a publication:

Dear reader,

It is critical that our society has a concept of the future that we want to build such that we may progress toward it. Successful societies must provide their people with an understanding of their position and potential, how to navigate and understand their environments, and what the most productive goals to work toward are. Historically, this problem has been addressed using storytelling tools, particularly mythology. In modernity, we are severely lacking such direction.

One could think of science fiction as mythology for the Industrial Age. In the past, sci-fi has functioned as an effective tool for thinkers and wonderers to allegorically explore complex questions driven by the frontier of technology. In recent years, popular sci-fi has taken a dark path - fueled by fear and doom, the messages are largely words of caution. The inspiration and constructive momentum found in works by the likes of Verne, Asimov, and Bradbury have been lost, and man has been taught to distrust society and fear the machine with no glimmer of hope to be found.

This is not the inspiration and instruction we need in order to navigate the future! This is no path to human progress!

“But what if we’re right to be skeptical of our institutions?” you may ask. “What if technology really does have the potential to be our undoing?”

This may be, and if it is, then we must not misplace our agency. It was us who put these systems into place, and it’s us who can and must change them when needed. Human agency has become too lost in the current instructions for society - go to school, go to work, retire - and many of us have become resigned to the state of the world and to our own circumstances. Challenging as it may be, only through our own intentional action can we identify and execute the steps toward a more positive and fulfilling future for ourselves.

It’s true that the world is hugely complex, and there are many perspectives on how the future should look, feel, and operate. But the fact of many perspectives indicates an abundance of possible solutions! Pluralism and collaboration are essential to both collecting and assessing the pieces that go into a bright tomorrow. No single viewpoint has the full picture, but each have their own virtues which should be brought into the fold of the future.

These ideas are just some of what we hope to contribute to the creation of better memetic infrastructure, for today and tomorrow. Possibilia exists not only as a space in which to predict or dream, but to actively shape the world with every idea we explore. Our magazine aspires to be a testament to the power of human agency and the transformative potential of technology, guided by the principles of optimistic realism and scientific possibility. Together, we're not just observers of the future; we're participants, and every innovation and collective action moves us closer to a world we aspire to live in. We hope that you will join us this Friday, March 1st, in beginning to build a landscape of optimistic, realistic futures.

Sincerely,

Your Editors

Publication Schedule

Welcome to our Substack!

We are a new publication and are working toward a consistent publication schedule. Our goal is to publish two stories (along with complimentary nonfiction articles and illustration) per month.

Story posts include:

For all subscribers:

• An optimistic, realistic, scientific short story

• A nonfiction companion piece

• Illustrations or other accompanying visual works

For paid subscribers:

• Behind-the-scenes content, such as concept art

• An interview by our team with one or more of the creators involved

All of these pieces are submitted by our growing network - if you’d like to submit to Possibilia, please see our guide on how to submit work here.

We may also may periodically publish what we like to call artifacts. These bits of future worlds will primarily be published as bonus content for payed subscribers, but some may occasionally be released to all subscribers or even included in our upcoming print issues!

Artifacts include:

• Short-form work

• Visual works

• Sometimes some surprises!

These are pieces inspired and created primarily by our core team - they’re how we weave in our positive visions for the future and create the overarching narrative of Possibilia.

Right now, our online publishing schedule is at what we consider a fine starting pace. However, we’d like to see frequency increase with growth! If you know anyone who you think would make an excellent Possibilia contributor, encourage them to reach out!

We also have a Founding Supporter tier, which includes all paid content as well as guaranteed invites to any Possibilia networking events for the year! This year may be a little lighter on events being the first year, but we appreciate your support regardless, and there will be other opportunities to gain event access.

What’s Next for Possibilia

Thank you for being an early supporter! The team at Possibilia is proud to be launching our online publication, and we all look forward to continuing to build out our anthology of possibilities.

Among our goals for this year is the launch of Issue 0, our first print publication. This issue will feature some stories that we’ve published online, as well as some new stories that will be exclusive to print. Along with the launch of Issue 0, we will be throwing an in-person print launch event - location TBA - and will be inviting everyone who contributed to the Issue, as well as our founding supporters. The current plan is to launch Issue 0 on Kickstarter, and we plan to have a tier of support that includes an invitation to the launch there as well.

We have high aspirations for what the publication could become - beyond just our print edition, Possibilia should be a vehicle for community and collaboration, both within and outside of the publication process. Keep an eye out for announcements, including future events, contests, retreats, and other fun plans we have in the works.

How to support Possibilia

Possibilia Magazine is an initiative run by the Foundation for Future Aesthetics, a nonprofit devoted to curating, promoting, and supporting visions of an optimistic and realistic future expressed through science and the arts. We are a core team of 3 full-time individuals - Olli Payne, Charles Rosenbauer, and Andres Osorio - and a small team of volunteers, advisors, and friends.

Possibilia is made possible through our rapidly growing network of collaborators and contributors! We work with authors, artists, field experts, and more to make the publication possible and excellent.

We are currently accepting submissions in the form of summaries or drafts of short stories, drafts of companion pieces for which you’d like to see a story written, and artistic portfolios. Please email your submission to be considered.

We rely on donations, sponsors, and substack subscriptions to fund our efforts. We’d like to thank all of our current paid subscribers, donors, and sponsors - and welcome new supporters to help us grow!

You can donate here through the Foundation for Future Aesthetics website. If you are donating >$1k, please also reach out to us so we can express our gratitude by listing you on our donor page (coming soon!).

As mentioned, we are looking for both corporate and nonprofit sponsors for the magazine. We work with sponsors to understand their needs and determine a solution that gives them the most value from Possibilia. If your organization is interested in sponsoring Possibilia Magazine, please reach out!

If you like the stories you read on our Substack, and want to get the full experience, please subscribe! The companion pieces and artwork that go along with each story are our way of bringing them to life and connecting them to reality. To our current Substack subscribers, thank you and we hope you continue to look forward to new stories.

We’re also seeking support in the following ways:

Volunteer Editors:

We mentioned before that we’d like to see publishing frequency go up - but right now we are bottlenecked on editorial support. This volunteer position would entail reading submissions and working with writers on drafts if they pass the submissions process! If you have relevant experience and an extra 10-15 hours a week, please email us.

Fundraising leads:

Possibilia is largely possible due to our core team and network of contributors who volunteer their time, creativity, knowledge, and other vital resources to the project. We have goals of (a) expanding the full-time team and (b) compensating the contributors who produce the excellent works that you will see in the publication. These goals are lofty but reachable, and we are searching for potential donors and/or sponsors who believe in and endorse our mission to step up and help make this possible. If you can help us find those individuals, please reach out!

Feedback:

Any and all feedback is welcome. We aim to make Possibilia into something Great, and are open to thoughts on how to do so!