COMPLETE SHORT FICTION
A choice becomes a calculation. A crossing becomes a case. A child’s question becomes an archive.
Written in 2025, these three stories each contain exactly 1,638 words. The number is both their shared case designation and their formal limit.
Each follows a different encounter with a system that cannot finish its own proceedings: a benefits calculation, a judicial opinion, and an archive. Read the stories in full, or download their reading editions.
For the shared inquiry and its connection to the screenplays and QMD studies, read what Case 1638 investigates.
The three Case 1638 stories: Copyright © 2025 Liana Marie Sive. All rights reserved.
2025 · EXACTLY 1,638 WORDS
Margaret Chen needs to decide when to claim Social Security. Her benefits calculation requires a life expectancy; the life expectancy calculation requires an income. Each attempt to settle the question creates another procedure.
Read the complete story2025 · EXACTLY 1,638 WORDS
A $50 jaywalking ticket reaches a court composed of nine Justices Thomas. To decide the case, they must decide whether they have the authority to decide it. The petitioner waits while the opinions multiply.
Read the complete story2025 · EXACTLY 1,638 WORDS
An adult intervenes as a child reaches for something. Statements and clarifications follow. An archivist descends through departments absent from the building plans as a case number begins to enter ordinary gestures and sounds.
Read the complete storyRead the satirical cover letter directly beneath Out of Place, or open the Petition for Certiorari for Publication separately.
The related screenplay Case 1638: Recall has its own page.
SHORT FICTION · SATIRE
At five fifty-eight, a librarian is ordered to move the whole of literature two inches to the left. Her daughter is waiting outside.
Read the complete storySATIRICAL COMPANIONS
The Committee Address announces the new chronology.