← LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy Story Podcast (Sci-Fi | Audiobook | Short Stories)
LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy Story Podcast (Sci-Fi | Audiobook | Short Stories)
"The Tide Folk" by Jennifer Hudak + "Espie Droger Dreams of War" by Matthew Kressel
00:45:18
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- [00:05]
Narrator/Announcer
Lightspeed.
- [00:07]
Alison Belle Buse
Hello, my name is Alison Belle Buse. Pleased to be your muse for the Lightspeed Magazine podcast. Today we have quite the pair of stories for your listening pleasure. First up is the short shot the Tide Folk by Jennifer Hudak. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Coming up right after this message, K
- [00:31]
Commercial/Advertiser
Pop Demon Hunters, Haja Boys Breakfast Meal and Hunt Trick's meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that Rumi?
- [00:39]
Alison Belle Buse
It's not a battle.
- [00:41]
Commercial/Advertiser
So glad the Saja Boys could take
- [00:42]
Narrator/Story Reader
breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.
- [00:44]
Narrator/Announcer
It is an honor to share.
- [00:46]
Commercial/Advertiser
No, it's our honor. It is our larger honor.
- [00:50]
Alison Belle Buse
No, really stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle.
- [00:55]
Commercial/Advertiser
Pick a meal to pick a side
- [00:58]
Narrator/Announcer
and participate in McDonald's while supplies last
- [01:02]
Narrator/Story Reader
springfest is heating up at lowes and for a limited time we have the extra big deals you need to impress guests. Get your outdoor space ready and save $50 on a select cobalt 24 volt blower kit now $79 plus save $80 on a char broil performance four burner grill now $199. It's SP and our best lineup is here at Lowe's, valid through 413.
- [01:27]
Narrator/Announcer
While supplies last selection varies by location.
- [01:32]
Alison Belle Buse
And now Stefan Rudnicki
- [01:37]
Narrator/Story Reader
the Tide Folk by Jennifer Hudak in summer, when the ocean ebbs at dusk, when the sand turns to glass and it becomes impossible to discern the difference between reflection and sky, the Tide Folk emerge from their pools. You might think if you clamber on the cliffs, searching for those tiny ecosystems the sea leaves behind twice a day, that you can see all there is to see that you could, if you tried, touch the bottom of the pockets of water with your fingertip and perhaps you'd be right. But something stops you from disturbing the shimmering surface every time. The tidefolk, like shellfish, are scavengers, emerging from their pools with seaweed woven bags. They search for empty shells not yet crushed to powder, for dried bits of dulse baked by the sun to a toasty crisp, or discarded lobster claws and feathers and bleached bird bones. They use their long nimble fingers to pluck up stranded sea snails and deposit them in glass jars filled with salt water until the inner walls of each jar are dotted with climbing limpets, dog whelks and periwinkles. It is not for us to know what the Tide Folk do with their spoils. It is enough for us to see them at all in that liminal space between sea and land, between day and night. Draped in green fringe, rough with barnacles, they trail the scent of salt water behind them. They move like the tide, moves slightly forward, then slightly back, making incremental progress across the rocks. When the wind blows, they pause, swaying back and forth as they collect their prizes. The tidefolk keep a watchful eye on the progress of the sun heavy on the horizon. They know that once the painted sky darkens to black, their way home will close. Inch by inch, they waft back across the rocks, bags clacking, jars sloshing, until they slip back into the water just before the first stars prick the velvet night. The pools swallow them whole without even a ripple, waiting for the waters to return. Had you not seen the tidefolk with your own eyes, you might not believe they had ever existed at all. But keep watching. Let your eyes adjust to the moonlight. For some tidefolk, the very young or the very old have become distracted by unusual beauty. One has slipped a soda can tab on their thin wrist like a bracelet, adorning themselves in detritus. Another found an empty chip bag and licked the salt from it before turning it inside out and and twisting it into a shiny necklace. A third holds a small glass marble in one trembling palm. The tide folk know that all beauty is ephemeral and that nothing is ever truly owned. They know that eventually, in one year or a thousand, the soda can tab will degrade and fall apart, the chip bag will shred into smaller and smaller pieces, and the marble will return to silica. And yet they still allow themselves to be dazzled. And in doing so, they linger too long. As the sun sinks below the horizon, their kin call to them with mournful whispers. They call, knowing even now that it is too late for them to return. Perhaps those left on land hear their kins cry. Perhaps they don't. We cannot know if it was an accident or intentional, this stranding. But if you sit very still and are very patient, you might see them, a darker shadow against the night, swaying slowly in the evening breeze. In the early morning, when the sky blushes pink and seagulls call with ferocious glee, all you will find are a trio of stones trailing bladder rack hair. You might admire the stone's smooth surface, the way they fit in your hand, the way they shine wetly like dark eyes. Maybe you will put them in your pocket and when you get home, place them in a bowl or a jar to admire. And then you will find that once dried, the stones have turned dull and pedestrian, ordinary rocks you might have picked up anywhere. But then you will remember that someone once told you beauty is ephemeral like dusk, that it is liminal like a tide pool, that it is often hidden beneath the surface that reflects nothing but darkness. And you think that the Tidefolk who remained knew exactly what they were doing when they stayed on land to greet the stars.
- [07:53]
Alison Belle Buse
You have just heard the Tidefolk By Jennifer Hudak Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki Jennifer Hudak's short fiction can be found in the Best American Science fiction and fantasy, Eco24, the year's best Speculative Eco Fiction, Strange Horizons, the Sunday Morning Transport, and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. She is a Nebula Award finalist and a graduate of the Viable Paradise Writers Workshop. Originally from Boston, she now lives in upstate New York where she teaches yoga, knits pocket sized animals, and misses the ocean. Find out more about her at jenniferhudakwrites.com. Welcome back. Up next is SB Droger. Dreams of War by Matthew Kressel Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki Coming up right after this message.
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- [10:21]
Narrator/Announcer
the war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scatter like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules light nightmare with a story that emotions emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s. And man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8pm Eastern on YouTube.com theglasscannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.
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Alison Belle Buse
Buckle up, we're going to Lightspeed
- [11:29]
Narrator/Story Reader
SP Droger Dreams of War By Matthew Kressel SP Droger dreams of war. What else can he dream of? There is nothing left. He has dreamed of world travel and expensive Scotch and lithe young women and sudden, uncontrollable laughter, but his vitality has seeped from him like fluid from a dying tree. SP is old and SP is tired. He used to dream of building a cabin in the woods and a family with offspring and expert systems to run the world. Now he dreams of rubbled cities and bursting orange flames and heaps of charred bones and the screams of babies. Now Espy dreams of war. He walks the shore of his private main island and remembers the day he settled here nearly four decades ago, when the ocean lapped the rocks, a hundred trees downslope. But since then the earth warmed, the ice caps melted, and the waters slowly rose, and now, even during the coldest months, it hardly ever snows. More than anything, Espy misses the sound of boots on fresh powder, the morning stillness in the forest after an overnight snow and the numinous sparkle of a trillion white crystals in the dawn. He walks the shores and dreams of those ancient days when life was new and exciting and he did not dread all his tomorrows. Now there is only an endless stream of gray sunsets, broken by the weekly arrival of the mailboat and its ferryman carrying news from shore. Espy asks, what's new? And the ferryman replies, nothing much. Nothing much at all. Espy sits at his desk, staring at his locked computer screen, and the vision of that gray beach fades like the after image from a lightning flash, asymptotically attenuated forever. This is the third time this month that Espy woke in that different time and place, inhabiting a future not yet been. It felt real, being that bitter old man lost in nostalgia and regret. But present day Espy isn't haunted by guilt. Like that pathetic creature, Espy is young and eager and alive, and that dissipated future man is merely a nightmare brought on by too much hard work and too little sleep. Two scant hours ago, Espy arrived at the Procurement and Logistics building and said hi to his dark suited colleagues in the break room that always smells of old coffee and rotten fruit, and he and his colleagues shared perfunctory tales of their weekend adventures, and Espy lied and said he had gone out and had a good time with friends, though he'd sat home all weekend ordering takeout and and playing video games on the couch. After their tales, Espy filled his giant coffee mug to the brim and headed down two flights of stairs to his sub basement office, patting himself on the back for not spilling a drop of liquid along the way. Espy's desk sits in a corner of a crowded storeroom that reeks of must and old paper, surrounded on three sides by cardboard boxes stacked on metal shelves to the ceiling. Espy's been working down here for nine months, and though he's thought about peeking inside the moldering boxes, he never once dared to look, too afraid of getting caught and punished and maybe even, the way things have been going lately, executed for treason. It's cold down here in the sub basement and dark except for the single fluorescent tube above his desk that gives everything a pallid, otherworldly glow. But Espy likes sitting here alone with nothing but the thrum of the boiler down the hall and the moldering cardboard boxes to keep him company. Here he can focus on work. Espy's laptop is bolted to his desk and he logs in with a long and complicated password he's proud of having memorized, and numbers light up his screen, spreadsheets and graphs, tabulations and data dynamically updated from all over the country and world, a mess of data that only Espy can untangle. Sitting here, Espy will remake the world. He sips his coffee and leans forward and nods and gets back to work. 36 years later in his main cabin, Espy tosses and turns in bed, unable to sleep. This has been happening much lately, this pestering insomnia when the memories of long ago tear at his conscience like glass shards and leave his soul bare and bleeding. Something has to change, and he knows just what this is. And one day, maybe today, maybe even this morning, he'll take that final leap. Because this can't go on forever. Moonlight illuminates the fog outside his window, just like the pallid light that lit his basement desk all those eons ago. God, he used to love those days. The comfort of numbers, the feeling of accomplishment, the joy at the end of a day's work. He slept easy then, knowing that he was helping the national cause. Now there is nothing but the howl of wind, promising but never delivering snow and endless dreams of innocent blood. Espy hears movement in his bedroom and he fumbles for the nightstand light, and in its yellow glow there is a figure at the foot of his bed, and Espy shrieks. The figure wears a well decorated military uniform, but Espy isn't sure which branch or rank because he never bothered to learn, despite taking orders from uniformed men like this for years. But as Espy dons his glasses, he sees they are not a man but a woman, and a brown one too, which is not unheard of, especially among the lower ranks. But a brown woman with this many medals and stars? So few survived the purges, and Espy could count on one hand those that did, and he knew well their faces and names because they were paraded around the country like trophies and proudly displayed in the new history books for all to mark and remember. But this brown woman in her well decorated military uniform standing at the foot of his bed is not one of those few. SP Droeger Fed ID 478-98-47132, the woman says in an accent he can't place. She speaks flatly, like she's addressing a wall. Yes? Espy says. Who are you? What's going on? How'd you get inside? Mr. Drogar, I am Lieutenant Major Ursula Gowrie, and I've been sent here to stop a travesty. Excuse me. Less than four hours from now, on this morning of March 7, 2074, at approximately 0645 hours local time, you will stand on the rocks on the southwest promontory of this island and take your own life by shooting yourself in the mouth with a hunting rifle. Your body won't be found for nine days until the mailboat pilot that visits this island weekly investigates your absence. By then your bloated corpse will be infested with sea lice and flies, and the crabs and seabirds will have pecked your flesh to the bone. SP Is shaking and feels like vomiting, and he wants to reach for a knife or gun he doesn't have nearby. I don't understand. Are you threatening me? No, Mr. Droger. A threat implies a potential for escape. You have no such luxury. I don't understand? That's my purpose, Mr. Drogard. To help you understand. By the Temporal Council of War and the New Terran Governing Corpus, you have been found guilty of crimes against humanity. A version of yourself from a timeline closed off to you has testified on your behalf in front of judge and jury. The verdict was unanimous on all counts. Guilty. The punishment for your crimes is spochkay. Spot what? Spockai. It's a word that doesn't yet exist in your language. Its meaning roughly translates to life attenuation by gradual reality diminishment. Is this a joke? I'm afraid not, Mr. Droger. Who did you say you were? Lieutenant Major Ursula Gowrie here on behalf of the Temporal Council of War and the New Terran Governing Corpus, I'm to execute your sentence. Are you saying you're from the future? Not the future, Mr. Droger. One potential timeline from your future. This timeline we presently inhabit is about to be closed off from the world. It may be more correct to say that both of us now exist in a closed time like loop, being excised from reality, like slicing off an infected boil. In this case I the lance will be thrown away with the infection to make sure the cut is clean. Espy blinks alert at his basement desk and the dream vision recedes like tides from an empty beach. His heart thrums and his breath catches and the dream vision persists in his thoughts throughout the day. Espy tells himself it's lack of sunlight or too much caffeine or or the melatonin he's been taking to sleep. He is supposed to optimize processes and streamline logistics, but all day he just moves the numbers around perfunctorily. The intention is there, but the feeling is gone. Espy usually exults in the work, delights in the mathematics, but there is no joy today and he works late to make up for lost time. It's well after 2100 hours and most have gone home when he hears footfalls on the stairs and a uniformed officer steps down and SB sees their shiny shoes first, then their ironed pants and the olive green of their shirt, and for a terrifying instant he thinks this person is Lieutenant Major Gowrie from his dream vision. But then he sees the liver spotted white fist and the broad masculine shoulders, and he breathes a sigh of relief. This is General McColland, whom he knows well. Sir, I sp says, jumping to his feet. Sit, son, the General says, and Espy obeys. Working late again, eh? Sorry, sir. I just wanted to don't apologize for hard work, son. Betty in Allocation tells me you're our most efficient data engineer. You're our unsung hero. We need to get you a better office with natural light on a window. It's a goddamn cave down here. I like it down here, sir. It's quiet and I can get work done. I bet you can, Espy. I bet you can. You may not know it, son, but your work is helping us win the war. SB Tenses sum of the word war because there haven't been any big battles, only endless decrees and orders and movements of people and materiel like pieces on a chessboard. Though now that SB Thinks of it, there have been deaths, lots of them, though their numbers lay buried in charts and graphs, in rounding errors and fractional remainders. And late at night, when the magnitude of his work often rouses him from sleep, he consoles himself that it's a necessary evil. There are enemies among us, after all, and like vermin and inefficiency, they need to be rooted out. Without men like you, the general goes on. Hard working, strong young men who do the necessary labor without whining like pussies. Well, the ward be lost. I'm putting you in for a commendation. Thank you, sir. You hungry, son? You want me to get one of the girls to order your dinner? No, sir. Thank you, sir. Well, you just holler if you need anything. New desk, new office. Tomorrow I'll talk to the boys upstairs about getting you a raise. You deserve it, son. And Espy. Yes, sir. And suddenly General McClellan's face isn't his anymore, but Lieutenant Major Gowrie's brown and female, and she has all the wrath of a vengeful demon. Keep up the good work, son, lieutenant Major Gowrie says, and Espy gasps. Everything all right, son? The general says, and Espy blinks, and the general's a man again. White face, square jaw. A day of scruff. Yes, sir. All good, sir. And the general gives Espy a curious look and nods and seems both puzzled and amused as he heads back upstairs to his war. It's still dark on the island, and moonlight spills down through the fog like corpse light, but a hint of the coming dawn limns the east, and the fog in that direction glows like orange fire. Espy and Lieutenant Major Gowrie walk the shore as a biting wind nips at his exposed skin. Espy shudders, but the Lieutenant major doesn't seem to be affected by the cold. She walks with her hands behind her back. I'll try to put this as succinctly as I can, Mr. Drogher. Six months from now, there will be a world war that leads to a global nuclear exchange. The details of this war are too complex to get into. But the government you served for years, the government who gave you this island and built you your house and gave you your generous pension. This government is the war's chief instigator. Your country will suffer enormous casualties. And in the aftermath, your government and dozens of others will collapse. And after a tumultuous decade, a new world government will arise. And that government will seek to make expiations for the sins of the past that led to the global catastrophe. And when tabulating the number of deaths caused by individuals based on recovered data, your actions will be ranked number six. You being responsible, directly or indirectly, for more than 11 million deaths. Not including the 400 million dead from the nuclear exchange. This is a dream. I'm dreaming. No, this is Spochka. Your consciousness is being attenuated. They reach the rocky promontory on the southwest corner of the island just as the orange sun crests the horizon and its meager warmth begins to burn away. The fog waves crash loud and the sea wind bites. And there are birds on the rocks and crabs too. And there's a dead seal, washed up all bloated, its ribs exposed to the sky. Except it's not a seal. That's you, Mr. Droger. A week after you shot yourself. However, that travesty won't happen now. A jury of your peers has unanimously decided that letting you take your own life on this beach is too lenient a sentence for your crimes. I've lost my mind. That defense didn't work for the jury and it doesn't work now. You received quarterly psych evaluations as part of your government employment. And though the intentions of those evaluations are suspect, the data they provide is clear. You were of sound mind and body when you sent 11 million people to their deaths. I didn't kill anyone. I was a data engineer. I optimized processes. I streamlined production logistics. And you had no idea what those numbers represented, right? Mr. Droger sp blinks stupidly at her. No. The jury found that hard to believe, Mr. Droger. And frankly, Mr. Droger, so do I. My grandparents were among the people you sent to their deaths. I didn't send anyone to their deaths. My grandmother was arrested for spreading anti government messages on the Internet. She was denied her medication in prison and died of kidney failure. Your name was on the order that cut health care to Inmates. The footnote signed by you recorded it. A cost saving measure. My grandfather was arrested for holding so called subversive meetings at his bookstore and was forcefully relocated to an internment camp. The camp didn't have clean drinking water and he and hundreds of others died there of disease. Your orders cut the water filtration from the camp. There are 11 million more examples, Mr. Droger. Should I go on? This is a nightmare. I have to wake up. I'm sure the 11 million people you murdered felt the same way when they were dying. Why are you doing this? I was born in a Displaced Persons camp, Mr. Droger. My mother died from brain cancer, my father from lung cancer. Everyone gets cancer in my time, Mr. Droger. It's like the common cold. I grew up in the hell you helped bring about. That's why I volunteered for this suicide mission, so that I can be sure your sentence is executed successfully. I volunteered to undergo spochkai. This version of me will attenuate with you. I am, for all intents and purposes, dead, Mr. Droger. And therefore I am out of fucks to give. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. I'm sure that's what Kayla Johnson wished for too. She was 27, an oncology nurse arrested for medically treating an undocumented immigrant. She died in prison from starvation after your order rescinded food deliveries to save money. Please stop. Chaya Stutzkever, 15. She had severe disabilities and needed 24 hour medical care, but your cost saving measures cut public funding to schools. She suffocated on her own mucus because the public school she attended could no longer afford to hire a nurse. But I didn't kill them. Not all murders happen at the end of a gun, Mr. Drogher. On the rocky promontory, a cormorant pecks at the corpse's skull. It's 1930, after a long workday, and Espy and his colleagues sit in a circular booth at an expensive lounge with plush velvet seats and candle lighting and slow jazz playing from hidden speakers. And the men smoke cigars and drink scotch and the women sip martinis. And everyone is laughing and smiling and having a grand time. And Espy realizes they're waiting for him to answer some question he didn't hear them ask because part of him still walks that desolate beach beside Lt. Major Gowry. What? SB stutters and his colleagues laugh, especially Bethany, with her perfect white teeth and flawless skin, whom Espy's had a crush on since forever. And his face becomes a furnace and he leans forward to sip his expensive scotch to hide his shame, and under the clear table is a wide glass cylinder like a huge jar of preserves holding up the table, and Espy was sure when he first sat down the cylinder had been full of glass marbles and flowers and abstract artistic shapes, but now the cylinder is full of shrunken corpses of children and their eyes are swollen like hard boiled eggs squeezed from their shells and Espy screams and jumps up and his colleagues gawp at him with alarm and say, what's wrong, Espy? What happened? And Espy says, excuse me, I have to go, I'm not feeling well, and when he looks around the expensive lounge all the tables have babies in them, like fetal specimens in his high school biology class, and not just the tables but the circular booths are skinned with the leather of dead people and there are lines of human teeth adorning the railings and the chair legs are human femurs and their cocktail glasses are filled with human blood and his colleagues are still smiling and laughing and having a grand time as Espy runs out into the rain. Espy was sure there was a parking lot here before and a highway and neon signs and a fast food joint across the road, but now there is only an ashen grey landscape and smoke as far as he can see. We have your credit card receipts, Lt. Major Gowry says, standing beside him. You went out with your colleagues 681 times during your stint working for the government. You always put it on the government stab. You didn't even pay for your own drinks. What is this? Where am I? This is where the parking lot was outside the lounge. This is what you did to the world. The gray is everywhere in everything. But I didn't do anything. That excuse is getting old. Espy weeps and falls to his knees and cries. Please, I'm sorry, I've had enough. Make it stop, make it stop. Lieutenant Major Gowrie looks down at him and there is a glint of something in her eye, not pity but a kissing cousin to it. I want to show you something. There is a break in the clouds and Espy squints in the sun and suddenly they are on a grassy hill in the shade of a large elm overlooking a solar panel farm and there's a small city in the distance. Wildflowers speckle the hill and birds chirp and insects buzz and the sun is high and warm, the wind is steady and calm, but there's a strange ultraviolet glow in the sky, especially at the horizon, like the haze around the black light. This is where I'm from, Lt. Maj. Gowry says, and she's not in a uniform anymore but in a white plastic hazmat suit with a clear panel for her face. This is the world I left to undergo spochka. The atmosphere's ionized from all the nukes, so you have to suit up or you get sick when you go outside. We take pills to keep us alive, but the cancer comes for us all because the poison's in everything. I don't know a soul over the age of 60. I left behind a 40 year old daughter whom I will never see grow up. At least this version of me won't, and it was the hardest God damned thing I ever had to do. That's how much I despise you, Mr. Droeger. The wind gusts and the bird calls, and from down the hill comes the echo of children's laughter. We mostly stay indoors, in buildings sealed against the poisons, except to heal the land, one ruined acre at the time, to remake the world into the paradise you and your kind so willfully destroyed. But I Shut up, Mr. Droger. You don't get to speak. You had your choice and chose death. I'm showing you my world because I want you to know what we are building in spite of you. I want you to know the future you will have. No part of. It will take centuries, but the earth will heal with or without our help. We will slowly remove the poisons from the air, 10,000 at a time. We will honor the dead. We will mark and remember each of their names, but your name will be a curse throughout the generations. A cloud passes before the sun and everything goes gray again and they are back in the world of ash and smoke and Espy cries again. When does it end? That's the thing about Sportskay, Espy. It's an asymptotic line. It attenuates essentially forever. Espy wakes at his desk, or maybe he was always awake here, and the boiler thrums down the hall, but otherwise all is still and there are tears on his face and his whole body shakes and he feels like he might pass out from exhaustion, and his laptop screen is locked and SP logs in with his long and complicated password and the numbers shine into his eyes, equations and spreadsheets and complex tabulations dynamically updated with data from all over the country and world, and Espy thinks the real war hasn't begun yet, not the one General McCallland is fighting. Another war, a deeper war, a silent war. But it won't be silent for long. This war is just beginning, and the first salvo will be fired now by him. And as Espy thinks, this lieutenant Major Gowry is also here, standing behind him so that she's only a shadow and a voice over his shoulder. Your country will curse you. They will call you a traitor and burn your effigy, and your family will be shamed and ruined if you do this. Espy nods and knows they will stand him before a firing squad, or hang him from a pole, or wire him up to a million volts, or inject poison into his veins for what he is about to do. And history will never know how his system access allowed him deep into the country's data and how with just a few pushes of his little black keys at his little basement desk, he erased months, years of work, including all the backups, because his superiors trusted him and gave him total access. The house of cards he built will tumble. The system he fostered will collapse under its own weight. You won't be able to hide your damage once it's done. They'll trace it Back to you, Mr. Droger, and you will suffer and die in shame and infamy. This will be your spochka from now on. This will be your attenuation. You will relive this moment diminished forever and ever. And you will never exist because you won't ever be born. I am here to make expiations for the sins of the past. Yes, Mr. Drogar. My timeline, my daughter, everything I ever knew will cease to be. That's why you called this a suicide mission. You came to erase your own history and birth another. So now you understand the true meaning of sportskay. Espi nods and his tears fall as he moves his fingers over the keyboard and sends commands to obscure systems throughout the country, and his index finger hovers above the Enter key when he is done writing and testing all his code. Together, he says. Together, she replies. Her hand rests on his as they depress the Enter key, but her hand is only a shadow then nothing at all. And Espy is alone in the basement, with only the moldering cardboard boxes stacked on metal racks to the ceiling to keep him company. They will come for him soon. They have always been coming for him. They will always be coming for him. This long lightning flash will attenuate forever. And so Espy waits. He sits and waits and dreams in the frigid dark because there is nothing left to do but dream. What else can he dream of? Again and again and again and again, SB Droger dreams of War.
- [43:22]
Alison Belle Buse
You have just heard SB Droger Dreams of War by Matthew Kressel, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki and directed by me. Matthew Kressel is a multiple Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominated author and coder. His many works of short fiction have appeared in Analog, Asimovs, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Clark's World Reactor, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and many other publications and anthologies including multiple years Bests. His most recent books are the Rainseekers, Tor.com, february 26 Space Trucker, Fairwood Press, July 25 and his short story collection Histories Within Census V Press, February 25th. Alongside Ellen Datlow, he runs the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series in Manhattan. He co hosts the Nerd Count podcast with Mercurio de Rivera and he is the creator of Moksha, the submission system used by many of the largest publishers today. More@matthewcresel.net Stefan Rudnicki is a double Grammy winning audiobook producer and an award winning narrator who has won 17 Audie Awards as well as more than 35 Earphones Awards and been named one of Audiophile's Golden Voices. Stefan has been producing Lightspeed magazine podcasts since 2010, eventually adding nightmare and Fantasy Magazine and sharing the Hugo Awards for best semiprozine in 2014 and 2015. These stories were taken from the pages of Lightspeed Magazine which is edited by John Joseph Adams. The podcast is co produced by Stefan Rudnicki and Allison Belbuse at Skyboat Media and the stories and podcast are copyright 2026. Post production was by Alex Barton at Fazeshift and our music was composed and performed by Jack Kincaid. Once again, I am Alison Belle Buse and I hope these stories gave you something new. Thank you for listening.
- [45:58]
Commercial/Advertiser
There are vampires out there. They walk among you. Shoulder to shoulder in the dark. Heading to work, heading home, going to the bar. It's a life just like anyone else's and I have grown used to it. To the darkness, to the moon, to the taste of blood on my tongue. But vampires are dying out. We are a fading kind and I am the first one created in so long and that is a dangerous thing to be. Those who came before me, elders of all stripes, they do not want to see our kind gone and they will do anything to keep their power and for myself and for Grace who created me, that is a sword that hangs above our heads and the worst person of all carries our secret and he will use it however he sees fit. Who do you look to when things are at their darkest? From the creators of Park Dill Haunt comes Woodbine. A podcast about monsters, dreams and changes those you want and those you never saw coming. Season two arrives at September 24th. Distributed by Realm
- [47:00]
Narrator/Announcer
the world of Sonic the Hedgehog has been thrust into a not so dark, not so stormy, hard boiled detective story that probably nobody saw coming. Follow Sonic and the intrepid Chaotix Detective Agency as they take on their biggest case yet. This high flying, action packed adventure will take them across the world fighting for every clue they can find. It's one heck of a tale, which is good because this story might be the only thing that can save their lives. Well, if that's all, I can just dispose of you.
- [47:39]
Narrator/Story Reader
Wait, what?
- [47:44]
Narrator/Announcer
All will be revealed in Sonic the Hedgehog Presents the Chaotix Case Files. Listen now. Wherever you get your podcasts, the Chaotix
- [47:55]
Commercial/Advertiser
are on the case.
- [47:58]
Narrator/Story Reader
Ever open up your podcast app scroll forever and still not know what to listen to. And there are millions of podcasts and most of them, they just don't grab you. That's why I created Something you should Know. Every episode is built around surprising, useful and fascinating ideas. We're consistently ranked in Apple's top 200 with thousands of five star reviews. But more importantly, people come back because they learn something interesting every time. If you're tired of searching and you just want something good to listen to, try one episode of Something you should Know right here on the platform you're listening on right now.