The Sunday Morning Transport, January 2026
Araminta “Min” Lee runs her family’s doughnut shop while her father recovers from a stroke in the hospital. The shop has been in the family for three generations, serving classic doughnuts made with fresh ingredients and family recipes. But with her father hospitalized and sales declining, Min knows she needs to try something different, even though her father has always been resistant to change.
Min is a daydreamer who uses the Daydream Network, a VR platform where she explores different places around the world. During these virtual travels, she finds inspiration for new doughnut flavors. After watching someone eat a hot dog on a baguette at a mall in Orange County, she decides to experiment with savory doughnuts—a radical departure from the shop’s traditional sweet offerings.
Her first creation is a cheesy apple fritter made with sharp Vermont cheddar, reduced sugar, and black pepper. Despite her brother Calvin’s skepticism, the fritter is delicious. She begins offering samples to customers, and while reactions are mixed, some people love the new creations. Calvin starts posting photos of Min’s inventions on social media, and the shop begins to trend.
Min continues innovating, creating a maple bacon twist and a breakfast doughnut with egg, cheese, green onion, and bacon. Her father remains unenthusiastic about these departures from tradition, which breaks Min’s heart. However, her sister Bella encourages her, insisting that Min’s recipes are family recipes because Min is family.
The financial pressure intensifies when Bella reveals their father’s worsening condition—he’ll need expensive in-home nursing care. Bella considers dropping out of her cancer research program to help financially, but Min refuses to let that happen. She becomes even more determined to make the shop succeed.
Min’s social media presence explodes, and teenagers begin flooding the shop each afternoon to buy her limited-edition seasonal items. She adds more creative flavors inspired by her VR travels: brown butter pumpkin cake doughnuts with fried sage, pumpkin mochi doughnut holes, and Spam musubi doughnuts. Tech workers start placing massive weekly orders.
Bella brings home a pastry-scanning robot from her lab that they name Peep, which helps Min handle the increased business. By October, the shop has doubled its revenue compared to the previous year. Combined with Bella’s stipend, they have enough money to get through the end of the year, though they may need to take a loan against the house in the future.
As Min prepares to transition from her fall harvest menu to winter offerings, she brings a corn fritter to her father in the hospital. For the first time, he takes a bite and smiles, telling her it’s good. This moment of approval from her father, combined with the shop’s success, gives Min hope that everything will be okay. The story ends with Min finding her own path while honoring her family’s legacy, transforming the traditional doughnut shop into something new while preserving what matters most.
Julia Vee was that Gen X kid raised by libraries and still remains unsupervised. She often writes with Ken Bebelle, and they have penned over ten novels. Their novel Ebony Gate, an Asian-inspired contemporary fantasy, was published by Tor and was a 2023 Golden Poppy Finalist for the Octavia E. Butler Award.