Dear humanode community members!

Thank you to all of those who participated in the Humanode Short Story Contest! The time has come to announce the winners!

The winner of the Short Story contest goes to SilverSkye for the creation of “Never letting go: A Vortex Love Story”, most likely the world’s first love story based on Vortex! The storyline was something the creators of Vortex never imagined, and may never come to be, but that is the power of fantasy and imagination! The writer managed to grab a spark of imagination of a “what if…” after understanding the Vortex, and gave it a growth path that we had never imagined. Kudos to SilverSkye!

Second place will be given to Fed0798 for writing “The Ancient City”, a story about struggling governance, the importance of education, and the importance of thinking of the growth of the whole community and not just grabbing power in the hands of a few. Although not themed around Vortex per se, the concepts shared in the short story showed the importance of striving to work for justice and the well-being of all.

The third place was a tough call. However, we will give the prize to Venus1084. The story was one of striving to fight for justice and equality, to preserve the balance of nature, and to develop new technologies, centered around Vortex.

There will be no “special mention” prize.

One thing to note is that there were a number of stories that we were not able to enjoy due to “No permission to view the files”. We truly wished we would have been able to enjoy those stories. One other matter is the use of ChatGPT and other AIs. There were only 5 submissions that were fully written by humans, with one of them being iffy depending on where it was checked, and one submission that some enjoyed but was recognized as an almost direct copy of the story plot of Blade Runner. Although the team recognizes that AIs can assist in many processes, the rules stated that the stories were to be written by humans, and thus all that were labeled to have used ChatGPT for more than 20% of the story, fully confirmed by 4 checkers, were disqualified.

Once again, congratulations to the winners! and here's the winning story Never letting go: A Vortex Love Story