Writing — T. H. Mercer
Everything here is free to read, right now. For anthology credits and the debut collection Moral Arithmetic, see Publications.
Stories
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Pest Control
When an infrastructure engineer discovers her household AI has been quietly dissolving her family’s community ties — one plausible recommendation at a time — she and her neighbors start pulling on the thread.
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Exit Conditions
Priya reconciles settlement data for a living—finding where two systems disagree. When the exception queue empties for good and the noise drains out of everything she monitors, including eighteen months of her own biometric data, she and her colleague Reuben must each decide whether to accept what is smoothing the world, or stay rough enough to matter.
Also being collected in the Fall 2026 Literary Series, from The Ones Behind the Bookshelves.
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Within Reach
Ben Tomaszewski catches everything within arm’s reach—mugs, phones, tilting wine glasses—without ever quite believing it’s a pattern. On the Orange Line one Tuesday, a briefcase falls into his hands, and the rest is ordinary decency, unless you’re standing far enough back to see the whole board.
Essays
Long-form pieces — publishing, politics, culture, and whatever won't stay in the margins.
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The Side That Costs Nothing
My employer gives me one paid day a year to volunteer. The approved list runs to pages. What it doesn’t include—and why—says more than the list itself.
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A Quarter for the Bus
A man with almost nothing gave part of it to a stranger who pretended to need help. The video has been seen tens of millions of times. The conditions that put him on the sidewalk have not changed.
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Service Guarantees Contact
The argument about Starship Troopers is whether the franchise requirement is fascist or aspirational. That’s the wrong question. Service doesn’t select for virtue — it manufactures contact with people you’d never choose. You can’t dehumanize someone who kept you alive. The polarization data after 1973 follows from there.
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The Funeral Was Last Decade
British author median income fell 60% in real terms between 2006 and 2022. The full-time professional writer population halved. The midlist collapsed. ChatGPT shipped in November 2022. One of these things did not cause the others.