Instead of dispensing chips or soda, new vending machines popping up around the country spit out short stories. Short Edition, a French company, designed the short-story dispensers to be installed by businesses with long wait times. The machines, which cost $9,200 plus an additional $190 per month for content and software, have been placed at more than 30 locations in the U.S., including bus stations, restaurants, and universities. Readers select the story length—one that takes one minute, three minutes, or five minutes to read—and the tale is printed on a receipt-like strip of paper for free. The machines currently pull short stories from a database of more than 100,000 original works submitted by French authors and translated into English. But the company plans to hold contests for English speakers around the world to submit stories. Says Andrew Nurkin of the Free Library of Philadelphia, which recently received funding to install the kiosks: “Who knows? Maybe you press a button and get a story written by your neighbor.”