Donuts from the Daydream Network
In this month’s second, free, story, Julia Vee has baked a very special, fictional confection.
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Welcome to The Sunday Morning Transport 2026, and the many exciting stories we plan to bring you in our fifth year! We are grateful for your support in helping us get here, and in continuing to bring more extraordinary writers and their work to the page.
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~ Julian and Fran, January 11, 2026
Doughnuts from the Daydream Network
by Julia Vee
Araminta Lee is tired of doughnuts.
This would not be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that she works at a doughnut shop owned by her father.
Araminta ties the red apron tight around her waist as a gaggle of tech bros saunter in. Is gaggle the right word? Not a pack. Not a murder, like crows. Araminta gets briefly distracted while noodling on the etymology. Then it hits her. It’s a treachery, like swans.
The tall one casually sporting VR goggles around his neck points to the front case. “Can I get three of the chocolate cake doughnuts with sprinkles?”
Araminta pastes her patented proprietor smile on and clicks her tongs twice. “Of course.”
She pulls open a pink box and begins to pack his order.
He turns to his two friends. “You want anything?”
The short one doesn’t have VR goggles, but the film on his glasses means he’s probably able to see all the ratings of Lee’s Delightful Doughnuts inside his lenses. “These flavor selections are kind of limited. I’ll pass.”
Araminta winces internally. How many times has she said the same thing to her dad? His response: We have to be good at the classics. We don’t need a bunch of flavors. She isn’t so sure of that anymore. Now that her dad is in the hospital and sales at the store are flagging, she needs to try something different.
She rings him up and he scans his wrist gauntlet. A small chime signals payment.
Araminta flicks her eyes to Mixie, in the back, the robot dutifully getting the batter to the perfect texture. When her grandparents opened this store, they made everything from scratch and hand-frosted the doughnuts. Three generations later, Min does the work of several people because the measuring, timing, mixing, and frosting is automated now. The secret to their delicious doughnuts lies in the freshness of the ingredients and their family recipes. Araminta can’t help but think the secret to the future lies in having new offerings.
Her wrist beeps as her sister’s holo pops up. “Min! How’s it going at the shop?”
“The usual,” Araminta says. “How’s Dad?”
Bella leans forward. “Let’s talk later,” she whispers.
Araminta nods—Dad is awake. “I’ll finish my shift when Calvin gets here, and we can walk around the hospital grounds.”
Bella nods. “Can you bring me a glazed pink?”
The day blasts through the early-morning rush, the coffee breakers, and then the elevensies crowd. Min never imagined running a business. She’s a daydreamer, not a shopkeeper. But she’s been working here the last two years since finishing high school and likes to think she’s got a knack for it.
Calvin arrives after his high school classes are done. He usually does his homework and helps her with inventory. Today her brother bounces in, his hair flopping in that careless way. “Hey, I don’t have any homework today. I’ll take the front.”
Araminta gives him a big hug. “You’re the best.”
He bumps his forehead against hers. “You start early.”
It’s true. She’s here by four a.m., getting the dough ready, loading everything into the frying vats so that she can serve the five-thirty crew hot, fresh doughnuts and strong coffee.
She goes into the back and, with a hum of anticipation, pulls on her VR rig. She likes the Daydream Network, where she can wander the world. She’s at a shopping mall in Orange County, people watching. Some patrons have personal androids to carry their items and keep them company as they shop.
Araminta wonders how she can make a better doughnut. One that isn’t boring or, more important, too sweet.
A lanky teenager strolls by, carrying a pink tote in one hand and, in the other, taking careless bites out of something that looks like a baguette with a hot dog sticking out of it. She smiles, remembering years ago watching a hockey game and eating something similar.
I want savory doughnuts.
Later that night she asks Calvin over dinner, “What do you think about savory doughnuts?”
He makes a face. “Like . . . cheese?”
“Maybe. You know how at Thanksgiving I shave cheddar cheese onto the apple pie?”
“Well . . . I guess that’s okay,” he says, but she can tell he isn’t sold.
“I could make a cheesy apple fritter.”
Calvin grins. “I’d eat it once.”
They laugh—that’s their inside joke about food. They’ll try anything once.
That night, she goes to the hospital, bringing chicken and rice for Bella and Dad. She’s pureed his portion because the stroke left half his face paralyzed, and he can only chew on one side of his mouth. He forms his words with care, and his lopsided smile makes her heart crack a little.
Her dad was always so energetic—hefting fifty-pound flour bags, bustling around the shop, so proud of their family’s legacy. Araminta feels like a poor substitute for him.
When she and Bella stroll around the garden, Bella finally relays the prognosis. “Dad’s heart is failing. The arrhythmia caused clotting, leading to the repeat strokes. He’s on the max dosage of thinner.”
They’ve been down this road before—with the first stroke. The long hospital stay, then discharge to post-acute for rehab, then home with six weeks of in-home care, and then on their own. But after this last stroke, Dad can’t manage the walker anymore. He’s going to need a nurse at home.
Tears stream down Bella’s face. “I’ll drop out before we have to pay my next round of tuition,” she says.
“No.” Araminta is aghast. Bella’s going to be a cancer researcher. The world needs her. “We’ll figure something out.” She says the words, but she doesn’t know how they’ll do it.
***
The next morning, Min brings three blocks of cheese with her to the bakery and a lot of bacon. She turns on Mixie and reprograms the settings for apple fritter batter. She reduces the sugar. “Not too sweet,” she mutters.
She grates some cheese. Then more cheese.
There are very few dishes that can’t be improved with a liberal application of cheese. She uses a sharp white Vermont cheddar that she’s particularly fond of. She programs the vat for a shorter fry time, and at the stage when she normally glazes the apple fritters for that hard, sugary white crust, she instead drapes them in cheese. With a flourish, she grinds black pepper across the top before sticking them in the oven for the last bake.
The finished fritters have a glorious cheesy crust. When she cuts into them, the cinnamon apple filling oozes out. She waits impatiently for it to cool from liquid magma to merely blazing before she pops a wedge into her mouth.
An explosion of flavors—the savory, the sweet, the finish of the pepper—tells Araminta she nailed it.
One of her regulars, Jorge, walks in. “Two cinnamon twists, please.”
She bags them up, then holds out the plate of cheesy apple fritters. “Got a new item I’m working on. Why don’t you give it a try?”
He reads her little Sharpie sign: Chedda? It’s Mo’ Betta.
He smiles. “Oh, sure.” He pops a piece into his mouth and makes a face like he can’t quite figure out what’s going on. But after a moment he says, “Can I get another one?”
“Of course,” she says. “How about you take one home for Jill?”
As he eats a second bite, he smiles and waves cheerily as he walks out with two cinnamon twists and her cheesy apple fritter prototype.
That afternoon, Calvin comes in and sees that she’s refilled the sample plate. He laughs at her sign, snaps a picture, and uploads it to social media. Then he eats a slice. Then another. Then he reaches into the back and takes a whole one off the cooling rack.
“Feels like Thanksgiving,” he says, and she imagines them all together for dinner, Dad home from the hospital.
***
Araminta can’t sleep.
She knows her dad wouldn’t appreciate her cheesy fritter, but she still wants to make savory fun goods. One time she tried to make cronuts.
Her dad sighed. “Min, this isn’t a bakery.”
“We make doughnuts. That’s like a bakery.”
Her dad shook his head. “No, we’re selling happy moments. People eat doughnuts because it makes them feel something. That’s why we keep the pink boxes. Makes them feel nostalgic.”
Now Min lies on her pillow, frustrated. She gets out of bed, grabs her VR headset, and slips into the Daydream Network. She’s in Paris, wandering into a bakeshop where everything smells like butter.
The next morning she makes a new sign: Limited Edition—Seasonal Menu.
Jorge’s wife, Jill, strides into the store, her nursing scrubs crisp and blue.
“Jorge brought home that cheesy apple fritter. I loved it. A dozen for my team, please.”
At least Jill likes these.
She slices up the samples—now she has the maple bacon on one side and the cheesy apple fritters on the other. She pushes them on all the regulars. People make faces—some thoughtful, some disgusted, but some intrigued.
When Calvin comes in that afternoon, he’s crunching away on a bag of chips. She steals one and then stops in her tracks—sour cream and chive.
She looks at the cake doughnuts, the old-fashioned, and asks out loud, “What if I could make a cheesy chive, completely savory cake doughnut?”
Calvin shakes his head. “Bruh, that sounds gross.”
She rattles the bag of chips at him. “Really? Because you’re eating these.”
“That’s different.”
She scowls at him and goes into the back to jot down her new recipe. She asks Mixie, “What if it was eggy? What if it were like a breakfast doughnut?”
Calvin laughs. “Doughnuts are already for breakfast.”
Min dices the green onions, adds in the egg, bacon, and cheddar to the batter.
The finished batch smells exactly like breakfast. The cheese crust bubbles up golden brown. Hints of scallion peek through. She waves one under Calvin’s nose. “It’s like a breakfast burrito, but a doughnut.”
Calvin snorts. “It is nothing like a breakfast burrito.”
She breaks one in half and offers it to Calvin.
“I guess I’ll eat it once,” he says.
She bites into her half. It’s delicious—savory, with little crunchy bits of bacon. The cheese and egg are perfect, and there’s just enough of the cake doughnut batter to hold it all together.
Calvin polishes it off. “Okay, maybe I’d eat it more than once.”
He snaps a picture of her sample display and sneaks three bites of the maple bacon.
Min packs the maple bacon twist, the cheesy apple fritter, and the breakfast doughnut to take to the hospital.
***
“Calvin really likes the maple twist with the bacon. It doesn’t deviate too much from our traditional menu, but it offers something fun.”
Dad smiles at her, lopsided, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“I’m glad you’re having such a good experience at the shop, Min. That’s all I ever wanted.”
He doesn’t take a bite. Her heart sinks.
As she walks with Bella that night, she says, “He’s not going to eat them, is he?”
“He just doesn’t have much of an appetite right now.”
Min frowns. “He doesn’t like that they’re not the family recipes.”
Bella scoffs. “You’re family. You made them. That makes these family recipes.”
Min hugs Bella. “Thanks for saying that.”
“He’ll come around.”
That night, Min replays the look on her dad’s face and decides it’s worth spending the credits to slip back into the Daydream Network.
She wanders through Tokyo and finds a place that serves omurice. The chef whips up the omelet, slides the perfectly frothy concoction on top, and slices a knife over, and the yolk runs out over the ketchup rice.
She imagines herself as a chef, serving fried goods and happy memories.
***
The gaggle of tech bros walks in. No, the treachery of tech bros.
Tall Guy points at the maple twist with bacon. “Hey, that’s new.”
She smiles. “Good eye. We’re offering some seasonal flavors.”
The short one furrows his brow and studies the breakfast doughnut. “What’s in that?”
She offers him a sample. “There’s some egg, cheese, green onion, and bacon.”
He pops one in his mouth, and Min doesn’t like how it feels, waiting for him to pass judgment.
“Pretty good. What kind of cheese are you using?”
“Monterey Jack.”
He nods. “Solid. I’ll take two of those.”
She feels a moment of triumph, but somehow this difficult patron being interested in the new offering when she can’t even get her own father to care feels bittersweet.
Min doesn’t know how much longer they can keep the store. Min doesn’t know how much longer they can keep the house.
But for now she will do what she can to bring in new patrons.
The day passes in a rush with the usual regulars, but a large crowd of teens stream in that afternoon, taking photos and videos of everything.
Min is startled. Lee’s Delightful Doughnuts is not a cool place. It has never been a place that teens swarm after school.
“We saw some posts of your seasonal items. Do you have any more left?”
Min gestures to the trays.
The teens devour the sample bowl, and before she knows it, they’ve bought up the rest of her batches.
She says, “Oh, it looks like we’re out.”
Three of the teens in the back, who haven’t made it through to purchase, moan in disappointment.
“You’re out?”
Min bites her lip. Normally, she would tell them she could make a fresh batch if they wanted to come back in an hour. But she remembers the scarcity ploy.
She repeats, “We’re sold out for the day.”
“Come on, guys, we’ll come back earlier tomorrow.”
Min hopes so.
When Calvin rolls in, he looks disappointed that the sample bowl is empty.
“What happened? Did you not make any more?”
Min relays the story of the swarm of locusts—she means teenagers—that came in that day.
Calvin pulls up his tablet and grins. “Looks like my posts are working. We’re trending!”
“You’re posting these? How come you never did that before?”
He shrugs. “Everything was the same before, but now you’re making all this new stuff.”
Later, Min chats with Bella. “How’s work going?”
Bella and her girlfriend have landed pretty good positions at the cancer lab.
Bella says, “I’m going to get my stipend soon. I think that’ll help.”
But they both know it won’t be enough to cover in-home care. Min’s shoulders slump. “Maybe we take a loan against the house?”
“Dad would never agree to that. We’ll figure something else out.”
When Min slides into the Daydream Network, she wanders through Kaanapali Shores and into a convenience store. Construction workers eat Spam musubis.
The next morning, she makes a brown butter pumpkin cake doughnut—heavy on the clove. The pumpkin is sweet but not too sweet, and the brown butter gives the doughnut a nutty edge. It’s almost like fancy ravioli, except in doughnut form. She tops it with deep-fried sage.
That afternoon, three times the number of teens show up. They buy every item in the case.
When she brings her offerings to her dad and Bella, she tells them that the seasonal items have become so popular that there was a line outside the store.
Her dad perks up. “That’s wonderful, Min.”
She feels a warm glow in her chest and realizes how much her dad must miss the shop.
“When you’re done with rehab,” she says, “we’ll go in and then you can see the teenagers flood in.”
Silently, she prays that their fascination with the seasonal menu continues.
Bella takes a bite of the brown butter pumpkin doughnut and moans. “So good.”
The weeks progress like this, with Min adding pumpkin mochi doughnut holes to the seasonal menu. She’s going through an amazing amount of pumpkin now, and she wishes she had more help at the counter in the afternoons. By the time the weekend rolls around, she’s grateful for the rest—and for Bella coming home.
When Bella shows up, she’s carrying two huge boxes, thrusting one into Calvin’s arms and setting the other on the kitchen table.
“Look!”
Calvin scratches his head. “I have no idea what this is, Bell.”
Bella starts talking fast. “At the oncology lab, we got these older scanners from Japan. They can scan for abnormal cell growth,” Bella says, “but originally their function was to scan pastries.”
Min can hardly believe it. “Are we borrowing this?”
Bella laughs. “I asked to sign it out, and they told me I could just have it. Our lab doesn’t need it anymore because they already lifted the algorithms and scanning features from the machine.”
“We get to keep it?” Min whoops in delight. “Can we go into the store and set it up now?”
Calvin laughs. “It’s our day off, Min.”
But Bella nods.
Min pats the robot fondly. It has four mechanical arms, and its scanner interface works great. They program in the prices, and it can differentiate between the twists, the old-fashioneds, glazed, and fritters.
“We should name it.”
“It already has a name.” Bella points to the designation: P3P—Peep.
That Monday morning, Min gets a breather as Peep rings up customers while she boxes orders. She’s always wanted the shop to be busier, and now that she has Peep, they get through the line much faster.
Calvin points at the counter. “What is that?”
Min is proud of this one. “A Spam musubi doughnut.”
“Sick.” Calvin’s voice holds a note of awe. “I’d eat that once.”
They laugh as he digs in.
She dices the Spam cubes and sprinkles in the furikake. The dough uses mochiko rice flour—it took her three days to get it right when she was testing the pumpkin mochi doughnut holes. It fries up golden and not too sweet. The saltiness of the Spam and the crunchy sesame bits lend surprise and flavor to the springy dough.
She’s always wanted to do mochi doughnuts, but her father wasn’t interested in figuring out the blend of flours to get the texture right. Also, they went stale quickly. That meant they couldn’t sell them as day-old doughnuts. She’d understood all that, but now that she’s selling limited-edition doughnuts, she realizes she doesn’t need to make as many—and she can charge more.
***
The treachery of tech bros is back. This time, rolling an office supply cart.
“Hey, can we get six dozen for our meeting?”
Min practically rubs her hands with glee but keeps calm as she packs the doughnuts.
She and Peep stay busy replenishing the trays in time for the high school students that afternoon. The weeks fly by like this, with the tech bros placing massive orders weekly, the nurses becoming regulars, and the teens devouring everything in the case.
When she tallies up the books, she’s surprised to find the shop doubled its revenue in October compared to the year before—and compared to the month prior. Her overhead has increased with the premium ingredients, but they’re still doing well.
As elated as she is by the profit increase, Min fears it isn’t enough.
Bella does the math. “My stipend came in. It should be enough to get us through the end of the year. But you’re right—we might have to take out a loan next year. We can service it with the extra income you’re generating.”
Then she adds, “Min, what you’ve done is amazing.”
Min appreciates her sister’s words, and vows to keep working.
As she places her inventory restock order, she realizes that if the tech bros stop placing their regular order, she’ll make too much and lose money. Maybe these were concerns her father used to have and why he’d been hesitant about expanding. Expansion is a risk.
Maybe I’m more like Dad than I realized, she thinks as she slides into the Daydream Network and walks through a state fair.
The next morning, she makes a corn fritter doughnut. It’s a little sweet, a little salty, and it reminds her of Korean street food.
After Thanksgiving she’ll be phasing out her harvest seasonal menu and it’s time to think about winter. Maybe a yuzu-glazed mochi doughnut. She’s scared the teens will stop coming in now that they’ve become addicted to the pumpkin doughnut holes and the cheesy apple fritters.
“I can make new stuff,” she reminds herself.
Dad’s almost done with rehab, and she’ll have to navigate the insurance and in-home nursing soon. She brings a corn fritter to her dad. He looks bemused but reaches for it. Min is happy he is regaining some control of his hand.
He takes a cautious bite. Min waits, her heart pounding as he chews slowly. The left side of his face lifts in a smile. “This is good, Min.”
Min thinks, Maybe we will be okay.
Her eyes sting from holding back tears. “Thanks, Dad. I’m glad you like it.”
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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.
“Donuts from the Daydream Network” © Julia Vee, 2026.
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Oh, this is lovely.