Nathan Roberton

This account used to be @subcreation. Now it's @versezine. Poetry, flash fiction, screenplays, lyrics, and pieces on creativity. Short enough to finish where you find them. Fiction runs as serials at versezine.com. First chapters are free. Readers back what deserves a next installment. Some of this is written without AI. Some uses it. Every piece says which.

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Fiction | Rogue Passage | The Departure Part 2 A prince carrying a case worth more than his life. Bad news before breakfast, a traitorous guide, and a treacherous road ahead.

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Fiction | The Carrier Signal | The Observers Part 2 In the low glow of stacked monitors, coffee steams between crowded elbows as neon numbers climb and pencil scratches quicken around a number that should not be there.

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Poetry | Half-alive | Half-alive in These Streets Part 2 A slow walk through a city that forgot your name. Numb, intimate, and faintly spectral, it settles in the bones like weather you can’t dress for. © Subcreation 2026

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Fiction | Paws | A Good Day By Glass Hammer. Written by a human without AI. Cover image made with Midjourney. Kaia is ten years old, and today she's going home. She's learned not to talk about the things she sees. — EXT. CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL – DAY Under an overcast sky a sign reads “CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL” and indicates the way that emergency vehicles should go. Small figures, some in scrubs, can be seen walking to and from the building. INT. CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL - PSYCH WARD WAITING ROOM - CONT. A middle-aged woman is waiting on bright colorful modern furniture in front of a mural featuring a large purple octopus. A woman in a white coat comes through the door and beckons, and the first woman collects her purse, rises, and follows her into the door and passing a sign that reads “PSYCHIATRIC AND BEHAVIORAL MEDICINE UNIT - STAFF WILL ASSIST YOU BEYOND THIS POINT”. They pass through two sets of doors and have to stop to be buzzed through the second. INT. CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL - PSYCH WARD - CONT. KAIA, age 10, is sitting near a window in a room that looks a little like a youth center. There’s a TV playing cartoons in one area and a few kids sitting separately, alternately writing in journals or sitting still. There’s an air of sadness over them all contrasted by the noisy television. The lady approaches still accompanied by the staff member. LADY (leaning down, patronizing) Kaia, sweetie, you’ve gotten so big. You probably don’t remember me. I’m your Aunt Lydia. Did you know you’re getting out today? Kaia looks up at her, a little overwhelmed, and nods once. Lydia grimaces slightly, having run out of things to say and not accustomed to the silence. STAFF Come on, Kaia, let’s collect your things. The three of them leave the room. None of the other kids move or say anything as the TV blares on. INT. CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL - PATIENT DISCHARGE - CONT. Kaia is seated on another brightly colored piece of furniture as Lydia stands near a desk answering questions as another staff worker fills out discharge paperwork on the computer. She turns and sees, down the hallway, 3 SMALL KITTENS standing there. At first surprised and then uncertain, Kaia searches for an adult and makes eye contact with another staff member seated behind the counter, at a position where she can’t see out into the hallway. Seeing the girl’s confused expression the staff member gives her a reassuring smile. Kaia looks down, now self aware, and then turns to look back down the hallway. The kittens are gone. — © Subcreation 2026

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Fiction | Machinery of the Gods | Machinery of the Gods By Mio Calloway. Written by a human without AI. Cover image made with Midjourney. He raised his companion from an egg and taught himself to build weapons no one here has ever seen. Today he rides into the valley where both will be tested. — The steam rose and curled in the bright morning light, cutting golden pillars through the shade of the jungle. Takimaru leaned forward, pressing a gentle hand along the long neck of Chomny and did his best low chortle that typically soothed the lumbering leviathan, and steered him at an angle for the descent into the valley. Rainwater streamed off the giant leaves as they were disturbed, showering them in bursts of cold, a reminder of the narrow reprieve of weather that permitted this mission. About halfway down, Chomny slipped as the muddy steps dislodged part of the hillside. There he was forced to climb again in long sliding attempts to gain purchase in the massed roots, which usually gave a sure footing, but now kept peeling off in mats of growth that quickly became dangerous mud-sleds. After a struggle, he had to lie on his belly and let out a troubled moan, as the pair slid now backward in the direction they’d intended to go. Takimaru was up in a crouch on his saddle, as ready as he could be to jump off and avoid being crushed without signaling the move to his companion or giving him cause to panic. “There, there,” he crooned, rubbing the beast’s side as they came gradually to a stop at the base of the hill, surrounded by tall reeds extending out of the swampy water that now engulfed them. Takimaru removed his bow and considered using it to find the depth on the shallow side to judge whether it was wise to dismount and help his friend out, but before he could decide Chomny had already found his footing and rose, forcing him back into his saddle. From there the journey grew hot as they made their way exposed to the sun along the banks of still black water. Takimaru became anxious as the most difficult part of the adventure approached—the point where he must separate from Chomny to leave his friend hidden and alone so far into enemy territory. Finally they reached the place where he pulled on the reins, dropped down, and began guiding the giant creature deep into the undergrowth. Reluctantly Chomny laid down as he was bid with a parting whimper, as Takimaru collected his gear and departed alone toward the cliffs of the mines. Though the sky had clouded over quickly on the solitary march, and grown dark in patches, Takimaru located the sun overhead—they had made adequate time, after all. There was still a chance of a return to camp only a short while after nightfall. The terrain grew rocky and he began hugging the cliff wall with the cover of greenery slipping out below until, rounding a corner, he found himself exposed and had to scale his way down to a retracted ledge, a crack in the cliffside, where he could rest for a moment and survey his adversaries in relative safety. He drank water from a pouch then and listened intently to the quiet, steadily hissing wind and waited. Overhead, the sky had become one deep shadow blanketing the unnatural cascade of cuts in the quarry, squared-off wounds gouged into the land, in a darkness that was well suited to it. The wind crescendoed and when, all at once, it hushed, there was a distant low groaning mixed with the murmurs and crunching of workmen. Not too far now, and approaching, was the monolithic fleet of loud machinery, sending up black smoke from its pipes, hauled by columns of enslaved dwarves and flanked by mammoths ridden by orcs. Takimaru positioned himself, readying his bow with one long thin scissor-bladed arrow, his signature invention. As the horde drew near, the rain came, first in large sporadic drops and then all in one loud constant torrent. — © Subcreation 2026

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AI as Thought Accelerant | Creativity By Nathan Roberton. Written by a human with AI assistance. — There was a time when creation was slow. When every idea had to beg for a name, every story waited at the threshold of approval. You needed a handshake, a smile, a stack of money tall enough to cast a shadow, and some suit who decided if you were good enough. The hands that shaped the work belonged to many, and the work was always almost undone. But now— a machine hums in the corner, spitting words like a broken jukebox playing a song half-remembered from a dream. It works without coffee, without sleep, without a broken heart to slow it down. A single artist can lift a world from silence. A poet can summon verses that drift like mist over a sleeping city. A filmmaker can dream a scene and watch it unspool like ribbon in the dark. The barriers have thinned. The wait has ended. AI stands at the edge of the field, not with answers, but with questions. We step toward it, hesitant, curious. And then the first words appear. AI isn’t an oracle. It’s not a hammer, nor a brush. It’s a flicker in static, a mirror held up to your mind— showing all the strange angles you didn’t know were there, then asking: Is this what you meant? Sometimes it’s a trick of the light— words reflecting words, images reflecting images, a shimmer in the water that vanishes when touched. Other times, it’s a door opening, a hallway you didn’t know was there. To work with it is to move through uncertainty. It offers a sentence; you erase it. It suggests a form; you bend it into something else. Back and forth, a dance of offering and refusal, of shape and reshape. Until at last, the thing before you is yours. If a machine suggests a word, and you pick it— is it yours? If it sketches a skyline, and you move the buildings around, who gets the credit when someone stares at it and says, “Damn, that’s beautiful”? Who owns a shadow? Who claims the breeze that moves through an empty room? If you put in the hours, if you sit there sweating over every line, if you rip it apart and build it back up, it’s yours. The artist leads. The artist decides. The artist knows when the thing is finished. Call AI your assistant, your collaborator, your really weird parrot— it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you did the work. Or you didn’t. And the work will always know. Some say AI steals. That it sifts through the voices of the past and wears them like a borrowed coat. But creation is not a well that empties. It’s a river that widens, carrying and gathering all the more. Have you ever seen a field after a flood? Flowers everywhere, all at once, like the Earth had too many ideas and decided to write them all down at the same time. That’s what’s happening with art. AI isn’t siphoning creativity out of the atmosphere like a black hole that only eats good ideas. It’s throwing gas on a fire that was already burning. And the only difference now— there’s a hell of a lot more fire. But let’s be real. Not all art is gold. Most of everything is bad. Most novels are bad. Most poems are bad. Most paintings look like something a blindfolded gorilla made in three minutes. And AI? AI can make it worse. Or just make more of everything than anyone could care about. Because AI does not feel the weight of what it makes. It does not wake in the night with a sentence burning behind its teeth. It doesn’t know the pull of memory, the ache of unfinished thought. It can spit out words, sure. It can paint. It’ll hum a melody like a half-drunk keyboard player stuck in the 80s. But it can’t tell you what’s worth keeping. That’s up to us. That’s why we’re needed. Because the good stuff— you can tell. You’ll feel it in your gut. It’s the one that looks like it’s been through the wringer, the one somebody fought for. That they lost sleep over. You’ll see it, and you’ll just know. The best AI art: • Has intent. • Gets revised, and revised again. • Comes from lived experience. If you’re just rolling dice and hoping for something pretty, don’t call yourself an artist. Call yourself a gambler. Either way, AI is here. And people will go on arguing about it. They’ll write think pieces, shake a fist at the sky, shout about what’s fake and what’s real, what’s stolen or earned. Meanwhile, artists will go on making things. Machines will keep talking back. And they will get better, blurring the lines between artist and tool. But here’s the heart of the thing— the part that trembles when the work is good, when it’s right— that will always belong to us. So if you’re curious, dive in. Mess around. Make something with your bare hands. And sometimes let the machine surprise you— If it spits out something strange, something beautiful, something that makes you stop and say, “Wait—where did that come from?” You’ll know what to do. And in the hush before the first word appears, we are still the ones who hold the pen. — © Subcreation 2025

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Poetry | Rooms Without Views | I Watch Myself Go By As of Late. Written by a human with AI assistance. Cover made with Midjourney. — (Verse 1) I put on my coat, I step outside I know where I’m going, but I don’t decide Feet on the sidewalk, hands in my sleeves I move through the world like it moves through me (Chorus) Oh, I watch myself go Like a train on the tracks, like a wheel that won’t slow Oh, I watch myself go Like the end’s already written, and I just follow (Verse 2) I say all the words I don’t mean to say I laugh at the joke that I hate anyway I smile in the mirror, but it doesn’t stay Like a shadow that slips when you reach for its shape (Chorus) Oh, I watch myself go Like a train on the tracks, like a wheel that won’t slow Oh, I watch myself go Like the end’s already written, and I just follow (Outro - Soft, Resigned, Whispered) I put on my coat, I step outside And I don’t look back this time — © Subcreation 2026

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Fiction | Rogue Passage | The Castillo By Burnt Frontier. Written by a human without AI. Cover image made with Midjourney. A peculiar pair move through a city choking on a fresh war, guarding something they won't explain. Where the land ends, with nowhere else to turn, escape has its price. — EXT. VARRENGER COAST – BORDER DISTRICT – DAY Layers of rooftops stack into the distance where waves of heat ripple over them as they blend into the haze. There a column of dark smoke rises over the horizon. Below, streets are packed with cars and crowds of people fleeing the war with all their belongings in the place where they’ve run out of land to run on. EXT. STREET CORNER – CASTILLO PUB – CONT. Among the hubbub, two figures make their way through the crowd, an older bearded gentleman, and a boy of about 16 closely guarding a case, both looking a little out of place and trying not to be noticed. They slip in through the pub entrance. INT. CASTILLO PUB — CONT. Inside the dark space is as crowded and humid as the street had been. The man makes his way to the bar, keeping the boy close by, and speaks with the bartender there who directs him to the corner where HAYDEN VOSS, a man of about 30, sits with his feet up and a drink in hand, looking like the only person in the room who chose to be here. MAN I’m told you can make deliveries over the border to Klein. HAYDEN I can deliver anything anywhere. The only question is who for and for how much. MAN 10,000 in cash up front, another 10,000 in Klein, but only if we can skip your first question. HAYDEN (amused) What question was that? The man nods. Hayden raises his glass. EXT. STREET CORNER – AT A PAYPHONE – LATER Hayden looks over his shoulder then places a call. The line is ringing and then an indistinct voice can be heard answering. HAYDEN I might be able to deliver you your missing palace brat. (muffled speech replies) HAYDEN Well, that depends on your price. — © Subcreation 2026

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Fiction | Clean | Emily S. By B.D. Sable. Written by a human without AI. Cover image made with Midjourney. Blood on linoleum and a silence that won't last. Eddie walked into something he wasn't supposed to find, and now the only way out runs straight through it. — The blood pooling on the linoleum reached for Eddie, as the sprawling form of this woman’s body reached for and even embraced the oblivion that now engulfed it—the same dark shadow it seemed that was now seeping out from the corners and clouding up his periphery. Even as time stood still, there was a sense of motion, a sense of something stirring in the distance and that the stasis that engulfed him was only a field engulfing this room. Surely outside this room—if not outside this moment—there would be men in uniforms rushing toward this place. Toward Eddie. But as the adrenaline subsided, as time and the senses fell back into order, Eddie knew that there was no such field, and that the rooms of the surrounding apartment were not filled with shadow but ordinary light. No one was rushing in. No sounds of sirens in the distance. Released from the spell of shock, he took his compact camera out from his coat pocket and began taking pictures of the scene. He wouldn’t have another chance to investigate and he couldn’t lose the one advantage he had now of being in this place before the authorities. Of course, the evidence he was gathering could just as well be evidence against him—but without knowing what had happened here, none of that mattered. Going to the front door he opened it carefully again, this time with his sleeve, then used the sleeve to wipe off the knob on the outside—the only thing he had touched since arriving. He paused, wondering if it was better to go out the way he’d come in, or if it was advisable to look for a back way out—some patio or fire escape out a window—but glancing about no such avenue presented itself and the way he came looked as quiet as could be hoped for. He closed the door softly, leaving things exactly as he’d found them, and headed for his car. As he pulled out of the parking lot, the Nokia in his pocket began ringing. Fumbling, he got a look at the screen. A cold green glow. Emily S. The woman lying in the apartment. — © Subcreation 2026

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Poetry | Half-alive | Chorus of the Velvet Sludge By Asphalt Choir. Lyrics written by a human with AI assistance. Cover made with Midjourney. — (Chorus) O sing, dream cartographers of Crushed Milk! We've got eel-colored hearts and gelatin souls, The dandelion crowns, the forgotten bowls— Cracked, cracked like the teeth of the moon. (Verse 1) You count the moths under the streetlamp, their wings breaking on light, and say, Tell me how it feels to stay still in the fire. My coat is stitched from cut-up dreams, the night stretching, thin, around us. Your voice drops, Would you steal me if I asked? (Chorus) O sing, dream cartographers of Crushed Milk! We've got eel-colored hearts and gelatin souls, The dandelion crowns, the forgotten bowls— Cracked, cracked like the teeth of the moon. (Verse 2) In the diner, you scribble, What would you take? The ink bleeds out in your fingerprints. I say, The smell of burnt coffee, the dust on your mouth. We run, parking lot slick with last night's rain, you shout, Catch me if you want the answer, and I'm chasing, pulse rattling like a fistful of keys. (Chorus) O sing, dream cartographers of Crushed Milk! We've got eel-colored hearts and gelatin souls, The dandelion crowns, the forgotten bowls— Cracked, cracked like the teeth of the moon. (Outro) the napkin crumpled in my pocket— Take it, take it all. Eyes closed, I'm tasting burnt sugar and iron, knowing somewhere you're lighting matches in daylight. — © Subcreation 2026