As part of the fourth IViR Science Fiction and Information Law competition, DigiCon will publish the stories of the finalists every week. The winning stories will be revealed during the CPDP 2026 conference in Brussels on 19-22 May.
The first shortlisted story is now live on DigiCon.
It is called Clerk 9 and was written by Alberto Rinaldi.
Set in a world where language itself is subject to regulatory purging. Where “obsolete” words are traced, neutralised, and erased by trained civil servants, the story follows one such clerk who stumbles upon something the system was not supposed to leave behind.
It is quiet, precise, and unsettling in the way only the best science fiction can be.
The question it leaves you with: if a concept is erased from collective memory, can it still be remembered by someone encountering it for the first time?
The featured image accompanying the story is from Better Images of AI, a non-profit library challenging the tired visual tropes of AI, robots, glowing brains, metal hands, and replacing them with images that reflect its actual material reality. DigiCon has been collaborating with them, and you can explore the full flipbook on their website.
