← 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 Worldbuilder" by Phoenix Alexander + "Dream Destinations (From the Lost Traveler's Tour Guide)" by Alexander Weinstein
00:49:41
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- [00:05]
Janina Edwards
Lightspeed
- [00:07]
hello Starshine, the Earth says hello and welcome to the Lightspeed Magazine Story Podcast. I'm your host, Janina Edwards. In this episode, you'll be listening to the World Builder by Phoenix Alexander and Dream Destinations from the Lost Travelers Tour Guide by Alexander Weinstein. First up is our short shot, the World Builder, coming up right after this message.
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- [01:08]
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this episode is brought to you by HBO Max. The final season of the Emmy Award winning series Hacks is now streaming. Starring Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder, Season 5 finds Comedy Queen Deborah Vance returning to Las Vegas to solidify her legacy. Don't miss all new episodes of Hacks every Thursday at 9pm exclusively on HBO Max and listen to the official podcast on Spotify and HBO Max. Subscription required. Visit HBOMax.com for details.
- [01:39]
Janina Edwards
Welcome back. And now the World Builder by Phoenix Alexander Narrated by Justine Eyre
- [01:49]
Narrator (Justine Eyre)
the World Builder by Phoenix Alexander the settlement was barely two weeks old and so her own habitation husk had to serve as an ER room for the man who was carried in for from the planet's surface, screaming and blue lipped with trauma shock. What happened? The doctor listened as the man's co worker explained how he had been guiding a transportation eel craft when something huge and obscure rose from the river, crushed him against the bank and made off. The patient was miraculously conscious but incoherent with agony. All right lad, all right, she soothed, noticing with relief the lack of blood on the medical cocoon covering him, then noticing the lack of shape beneath 1/2 of the cocoon entirely. Im just going to take a look. She pulled back the covering and froze mid gesture processing the sight. The man's naked lower half was integral down to the bruised genitals and hips, but his legs disappeared mid thigh. There was no wound. The skin was clean, pristine even, as if no legs had ever existed at all. The next day the crew gathered on the Skolian's bridge to discuss the situation. The doctor listened as the xenobiologists described the eerie lack of fauna on the planet Ladon B. No birds, no insects or mammals, nothing in the water, nothing that could have inflicted such a Bizarre wound on a man. The injury was as nonsensical as it was motiveless. The meeting was abruptly ended by a screeching cacophony of metal outside. Through the viewscreens, the crew watched as the rods girding the habitation husks clattered apart, sliding down into the violet soil, fiberglass walls and polyplastic window fixtures falling into ruinous piles at the peripheries of the dust clouds kicked up from the earth the impression of whickering fingers as of a centipede or a million pale flamed candles. Something in the ground had taken the very bones of their buildings. The colonization mission became an evacuation. After that, more things began to go missing. As they packed up the husks, battery packs, engines of all kinds, solar panels and cells, the more superstitious of the crew began to suspect a phalanx of poltergeists on this new planet, playful spirits taking things from boredom, hurling them down in slow motion cascade enjoying Les Don B's weak gravitational forces after a day of inactivity. And just when the doctor had begun to suspect mass hysteria, she was wrenched from sentry duty by the sound of four people screaming from the bridge, the pastel electronics of the command deck making gross highlights of the curtains of blood pouring from their empty mouths. The floor. The floor. The director cried, and she looked down in time to see four arterial fibres moving whip quickly around her feet, carrying four bloodied tongues in their wake. They left. Sixteen days after planetfall. The scholion had almost reached the upper atmosphere when the crew, strapped into their seats, suddenly found the shock and fire of stratosphere beneath them. As the floor of the ship was torn away. The doctor tumbled, fighting to stay conscious. She had the impression of falling through a forest. In the air, grey trunk like arms reared around her, grasping the cylindrical molding of the Scolion's engines, tapering all the way back down to the ground. Her co workers tumbled out of the sky like toys, like little machines. The tongueless four she had worked so hard to staunch and bandage and sedate were taken apart with an almost languid passion by the questing alien fibers. More screams she wouldn't forget. She lost consciousness as the seat's parachute deployed and she drifted slumbering down to the surface, landing softly on amethyst moss. What had once been the ship scattered about the landscape in a miles wide radius, as did her crewmates. She would never see any of them again. An alarm like a mosquito, high and hectic, waking to fogged helmet interior and the gently lapping waters of the marshland, violet grass. Between the fingers of her gloves, the doctor pushed herself to sitting. A clearer sound, shockingly intimate. In her ear. A voice happened. Garbling interference. Mist rose from the swamp. Moisture filmed the inside of her suit. Her neck felt like stone, the helmet a sudden crushing weight on her. She pulled it off, left the earpiece intact in case anyone else had survived. Lights suddenly spangled the dense air in the distance, white and blue and electric yellow. Is anyone there? She spoke, hoping, voice glutinous, throat like paste. A noise unlike anything she'd ever heard bellowed out in answer. A whale's roar, the shredding susseration of a jet engine, the crackle of violent fire combined. Something vast and skeletal loomed out of the mist.
- [07:33]
Janina Edwards
All right, lad, all right, ladies.
- [07:38]
Narrator (Justine Eyre)
Rods that had girded their habitation husks were now pistoning legs, on top of which an amalgam of all the stolen things quivered. A ten foot skeleton with a bloated belly. A stilt walker in mud thick water. A mantis with iron raptorials, mechanical parts lashed together to form a crude meters long effigy of a human face. Four red and glistening shreds of muscles swinging around its jaws stitched awfully together, not like a human mouthpart at all, nowhere near horrible clarity of form. As the mist gave way around the creature. Eyes ribbed with plastic filaments beamed out like twin lighthouses set into the skull of the thing. Metal piping pulled its face open. A factory smiling, a chimera of flesh and steel mimicking her own rictus. Too much red entirely. Before her mind broke, she noticed more organic matter. A pair of muscular human legs swung around the thing's waist, or at least part way up the body, because the planet had not wholly understood what it had taken, only that what it had taken was somehow integral. The thing was close enough for her gaze to become lost in the snarl of industry and ingenuity it had taken to assemble itself. The more she looked up at it, the more of them, the colony. She saw pipes, beams, nails, sheet metal, silagar keratin. It loomed over her to speak and spoke with a soddering voice more play than speech.
- [09:19]
Janina Edwards
Floor. The floor.
- [09:23]
Narrator (Justine Eyre)
The doctor looked down. Her own legs pitifully small, knees cushioned by moss, tapering shins down to rubber boots that had remained miraculously intact. In the shadow of the creature she saw its own metal points, its own impoverished stumps that somehow kept it standing. But only Bentley. She nodded, lightness in her head in her mouth, lightness all around. The doctor pulled off her boot as the thing extended an arm like a fire hose, and at the end she saw the lamprey like harvesting implement of one of the eel craft. Starlight spackled upon its razored surface. Take them, she said, tugging at her other boot, exposing skin glistening with perspiration in the dank Separated from her body, the boots suddenly became the funniest thing in the universe. I'll show you how they attach to a body. The creature swayed, burbling metallic happiness, and its arm extended down to scalpel the sheep flesh and nodes of bones separating her leg and her left foot. It chattered as it worked. Pain gutted up from her ankle, and she wished so dearly that she could hear birdsong in that moment, or the chatter of people, even screams would do something, anything that wasn't stolen and yoked together. At least this was a gift bestowed. She remained unviolated in her benevolence. She was choosing this, and she was not a victim. Mine, the creature said.
- [11:01]
Janina Edwards
Show you.
- [11:03]
Narrator (Justine Eyre)
And it did, shifting its weight from one leg to the other. Iron joists slid into the meat of its new ankles, snapping into place at round, exposed bone as if molded for that purpose. The toenails glinted a tropical pink, diabolically cheery against the rusted carapace. It supported itself easier now, its mass distributed between two beautifully formed human feet. It told her how happy it was as best it could as she wept into unconsciousness, lifeblood venting from the stumps of her ankles. It continued its monologue even when she had fallen silent, chattering with stolen vocal cords in a language it had not fully mastered yet but was nonetheless making its own.
- [12:02]
Janina Edwards
That was the World Builder By Phoenix Alexander Narrated by Justine Ayer Phoenix Alexander he him, is a queer Greek Cypriot and author and curator of SF&F and horror. He is the editor in chief of Vector, the journal of the British Science Fiction association, and has published over 30 short stories and articles. He holds a PhD in English and African American Studies from Yale University and a BA&MA from Queen Mary University of London. In his day job, he is the curator of the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy at the University of California, Riverside, where he stewards one of the world's largest cataloged collections of science fiction, fantasy, and other genre materials. He lives in California with his partner, two dogs and one disgruntled cat. Justine Eyre is a classically trained actress who has narrated many audiobooks, earning the prestigious Audie Award for best narration and numerous earphones awards. She has appeared on stage and has had starring roles in four films on the indie circuit. Her television credits include Two and a Half Men and Mad Men. Next we have Dream Destinations from the Lost Travelers Tour Guide by Alexander Weinstein Narrated by Paul Bemer Coming right Up
- [13:38]
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- [15:06]
Janina Edwards
Now. Please enjoy Dream Destinations from the Lost Travelers Tour Guide Narrated by Paul Bemer
- [15:16]
Dream Destinations from the Lost Travelers Tour Guide by Alexander Weinstein. Your guidebook writers acknowledge that there's been a great deal of debate about how exactly an eighth continent appeared in our midst. Amid some circles, there's talk of the landmass as an intergalactic spaceship, its presence entering our reality like a sparrow flying through an open window. There are speculations that it rose from the sea like the lost city of Atlantis. Others have suggested that the continent emerged from a parallel dimension, as close to our own as the skin of an onion. If these esoteric philosophers are right, it raises a host of more disturbing questions. After all, if continents can appear at will, might a ninth continent soon emerge, pushing its way through our skyscrapers, its museums and discotheques, crashing into our living rooms like icebergs? To confound matters further, there's the question of the new continent's coordinates. Though it was first sighted by fishermen off the coast of Spain. By the time they'd reported it to local authorities, the continent had already disappeared. Boatloads of newscasters, government officials, oceanographers and a horde of interested tourists hovered around the sighting, finding nothing. Then, later that evening, the continent reappeared, floating off the Eastern Cape of Africa, this time captured on film and broadcast for the world to see. The continent behaves, it seems, like a great sea tortoise. It disappears beneath the waves at will, taking cities and towns, taxicabs and hostels with it, only to reappear in a distant ocean with salt water running down its avenues and falling off its sidewalks. Your guidebook writers admit that every time we board a flight to the continent, it's accompanied by a sinking fear. Perhaps our longed for destination will have departed once again, or worse still, will have disappeared completely and will be left only with postcards. Some days it feels like our guidebook is nothing more than an attempt to catch the elusive fluttering of the continent's new cities and pin them to the page like butterflies. But lest we grow weepy, let us turn our focus to the fact that the new continent is still here, alive and well, vibrant with fish markets and flowers stalls, and will be wise to worry less about the continent's disappearance than celebrate the re emergence of its cities and citizens who are ready to welcome us to their dreamlike continent. Yes, if, like us, you occasionally wonder whether this world is a dream, then the destinations contained within this section are the ideal vacations for you. The Emporiums OF Sonam One might hunt forever in search of the island of Sonam, whose borders are perpetually wreathed in a mist so thick that the idea of building an airport was long ago abandoned. The only way to arrive to the island is by ship, and only the most experienced captains can navigate the fog to arrive at a coastline where a thousand herons stand as tall as a procession of the Queen's guards. There are few cafes and restaurants to be found on the island, and no museums or cinemas. But though the destination appears duller than most, travelers soon discover, Sonam's dream emporiums made of white moonstone, which are as plentiful as monarch cocoons in late summer. Within these oval mosques, beds are heaped with pillows and feather duvets, and waiters circulate the perimeter, filling tall glasses with a milk coloured potion. Sip the milk, lay back against your pillows, and you'll soon discover a second set of streets outside the emporium's doors. Here, along the main boulevard, kiosks sell lemons, while washerwomen dunk comets in sudsy basins. There's a shop where enormous beetles sandpaper planks of maple, and high above, an airship unrolls its ladders to climb. A small child tugs your hand to show you an enormous moth he's captured in a birdcage. A woman with chestnut hair takes your chin and leans toward you. Bells clang in the distance, and the General raises his rifle, lets off a shot, and you find yourself seated at a candlelit banquet table where black bears sing haunting melodies. All this and more awaits you in the emporiums of Sonoma. However, it's worth noting that though the milk is cheap, the sleep destinations are rather expensive. You'll find yourself signing IOUs whose receipts unroll into the streets. We mention this as a warning, for we all return home having spent very little actual cash. And yet the trip to Sonam exacts a toll on our lives. We are plagued by nightmares where we work endless hours scrubbing dishes in the airship's kitchens to pay off our debts. Even more mysterious are our daily encounters. Sitting on the train, we see a man reading a newspaper, and it's not until we've stepped onto the platform that we remember him as the General. As for our restaurants, they're filled with strangers who we feel we intimately know. At a corner table sits a woman we once loved. The server is as familiar as our own mother. After visiting Sonam, it seems that our waking world is full of people we once knew deeply. We've been husbands, wives, sisters, and children to one another. We've gone for walks through extravagant gardens and danced to otherworldly melodies at distant parties. We've shared evenings with nearly everyone. No wonder we purchase our tickets to return to that island, happy to be leaving this world where we hardly know anyone. The Hotel Androga The Hotel Androga was constructed in 1634 by Prince Vorheim, who ordered a castle be built as a present for his beloved. It was to be filled with flowers and light, and the candelabras and vases which adorn its walls attest to this brief history of love. Alas, shortly after construction, the prince was cuckolded by his betrothed, who fell in love with a magician of darkness. Together they fashioned a sharp thorn which pierced the prince's dreams and left an unreachable wound within. The thorn proved to be so well crafted that the young prince would often wince from pain during his waking hours. And he spent the rest of his life cultivating a garden of sleeping herbs in hopes of reaching the splinter embedded within his nightmares. In his moments of waking, he oversaw the final construction of the castle, which he determined should function as a citadel of loneliness. Its windows were narrowed, its halls darkened, its vases filled with thistle. Here the young prince grew old, rarely emerging, and upon becoming king, he ruled little, made no speeches, and died without leaving so much as a single portrait behind. The castle remained abandoned and in disrepair until the late 19th century, when, with a sudden influx of tourism, it became a visitor's center and later the grand hotel it is today. Though the marble has been polished, the brambles burned, vases refilled with irises, and the stone bedrooms spruced up with curtains and wi fi a feeling of loss remains within its chambers. It's not uncommon for visitors to check into their rooms and experience a sudden weariness that keeps them from exploring town. They stay in bed, watch television, clip toenails, sleep. Such melancholy hangs over the banquet hall as well, which provides a complimentary continental breakfast in the morning and Michelin starred dining at night. And yet, despite the wonderful food, travelers find themselves besieged by an oppressive quiet. They gaze at their young children and already see them leaving for college. Many hesitate to reach for the hand of their beloved, taking instead a bite of their buttered toast and listening to the echo of chewing inside their skulls. When they depart the hotel, they leave with a belief that all their struggles have amounted to very little. It was their childhood, they say, or their failed marriage, the job not taken, the investment they should have made. All who have visited spend their days weeping into pillows, incapable of even the simplest act of rising from their bed and opening the window windows to welcome the world outside this place they once called home. The Mountains of Mont Blau if your travels have brought you as far as the northernmost mountains of Mont Blau, you'd be remiss in not taking the last step. The trip to Mont Blau is not for the faint of heart. There are no buses or gondolas, no car rentals or mopeds to lease, or any other way to scale the 3,051 steps of the mountain but to climb by foot. Located over the center of an active volcano, the temple of Mont Blau consists only of a thin walkway which corkscrews in into the belly of the volcano, extending ledges here and there upon which the monks of Mont Blau stand. It's not advisable to descend this path many tourists never return. Rather, we recommend the observation deck, where reclining chairs have been arranged so visitors may close their eyes and listen to the sounds of the musicians as they play the city of Mont Blaus into existence. If you've never witnessed the Uradine, Montblau's most revered instrument, you may wish to keep your eyes open. These elongated aerophones, akin to the Australian didgeridoo and the longhorns of Switzerland, produce their enchanting tones by similar musical physics. Notes blown into the tube travel to the end of the chamber, where they are refracted, creating hypnotic resonances and otherworldly melodies. Any similarities to the didgeridoo or longhorn end there, for these hollowed, crystallized stalactites extend 4 miles, and their echoes are sent through multiple passageways, each note imbued with earthly resonance, so that a single note is fractured into a chorus of symphonies. The monks whose beards, it should be mentioned, seem as long as the Uradin, are masters of their instruments, having trained their entire lives for this monastic life. They breathe one circular breath, and their continuous notes entwine with the ensemble. Listening closely, one becomes aware of strange noises within the melodies. One hears a laugh and envisions the face of a young woman riding a bicycle down a meadow lane. Her hair is loose and the spokes of her wheels click as bird calls rise from the fields. There's the sudden clean sound of a knife slicing through an apple. From the other room, the din of guests. A turntable is playing a jazz record. And outside the windows of the dining room, where bread has been buttered, men have been kissed, and children have gone crawling beneath the table, one sees a city. It is night, and the darkness is spotted with street lamps and passing cars. Flames alight cigarettes. At clubs where young men and women flirt, they leave for apartments and studios with unpainted walls. And here they're seized by love and fall out of love and stumble from beds and doorways to console themselves. On the corners of the world, listening even closer, one hears thunder followed by rain falling on rooftops. A woman on a street corner opens an umbrella. From an apartment window, a hand emerges, grasps the shutters and pulls them closed. Inside, candle wicks sputter, teakettles whistle. And far above, planes across the sky, each slice of bread, each baby's cry, each gasp of love is held in the monk's breaths. And when the children are tucked within blankets and that other world slumbers, the inhabitants close their eyes and sleep. For the monks of Mont Blau, who never rest but breathe one long breath until their dying day, we're sure you understand the tragedy of every monk's death. For within them go the lives of a whole city. The buildings crumble and birds fall from the sky. Grass withers and trees rotten, and nothing is left but the quiet reverberations of a note cut short. Within the darkness of an abandoned Uradin lies a chamber of galaxies in a state of suspension, each life longing for the music to begin again, for the lights to burn brightly, for the flames to dance on the wicks of candles and the record player to begin spinning. Traveler, we urge you to visit Mong Blao while you still can. The monks have grown old, there have been deaths, and their replacements have yet to arrive. The monastery attracts fewer musicians these days. The youth near Mont Blau want to leave their small town. They wish to become movie producers and actors, bankers and lawyers. They long not for the songs of the uradin, but the hum of electricity. The temple becomes quieter every year, its visitors less frequent. Soon, it's said, Mont Blau will be silent. THE ARTISTS of SNEEZING on rainy days, when cobblestones shine like turtle shells and perched gargoyles hunch their shoulders in the downpour, one can find the artists of Snee along the riverbank. Nearby restaurants pull in chairs, sweep tables of wine glasses and shut their windows, while tourists, caught unprepared for the sudden showers, seek shelter in curiosity shops. But those who know better open their umbrellas and set out for the small booths along the river where one can find the artists of Snee painting canvases beneath dripping awnings. What greater magic is there than to catch sight of the painter's easels wherein we glimpse our own future? Here's a portrait of the city at night, through the window of a hotel, we see a figure in the arms of a new flame, and we recognize our own faces. There's an open bottle of wine on the table, and our cheeks are flushed with love. In another painting, we see Lake Argos, where our children have taken paddle boats onto the pond. There, on the shore, we find ourselves surrounded by friends. We've spread out picnic blankets, and suddenly a champagne bottle is opened and the cork, a small brushstroke of brown oil, arcs across the sky. A car lazily passes in the afternoon rain. Wet echoes of tires caress the buildings above the city. The sky grows lighter. Couples emerge from restaurants where they've hidden, and young men return to their bicycles and start toward home. We see all of this in the oils, each tourist walking along the river, our own silhouettes painted in precise reproduction, the miniature canvases lined up beneath the artist's awnings. A patch of blue emerges between the clouds of a canvas. A couple of doves shake rain from their feathers, and from the cafes, tables and chairs are placed back onto the sidewalks, all of it captured perfectly. The last drops fall, the late afternoon sun emerges, and the artists lower their paintbrushes. They wrap up their canvases, collect coins from cigar boxes, and pack their goods until there's only one artist left in his canvas. We see ourselves standing alone with our umbrellas. The river, its canals and its bridges refract the late sunlight. We watch as we close our umbrella and walk away, back to our hotels and our lives so deeply within the canvases. The Gardens of Ailani in cities built with love, the curvature of avenues reveals the hearts of happy planners. Rivers meander through city centers like dancers, and one sees picnic blankets and parasols cast along the banks. Here, bicycle bells ring as young women return home with flowers in their baskets, and high above, windows are open to song and the scent of freshly baked cinnamon rolls. But such is not the case with Ailani, which was designed by doer old men who couldn't wait to busy themselves with lukewarm coffee and stale cigar smoke. The patriarchs cursed the city with their fiscal decisions, slapping down a building here, a grid of avenues there, scribbling in some streets and calling it their master plan. The city suffered from its history, falling into disrepair and decrepitude as the centuries weighed down its buildings, which slumped like hunchbacked old men. And it was only when the city was set for demolition that a man arrived to Alani's Town hall with his blueprints rolled tightly within a parchment tube. It's said his shoes shone like two half moons. It's said he approached the mayor with an offer. By morning the broken sidewalks would be gone, the miserable parking eliminated, the lifeless apartment buildings resurrected as if newly born. There'd be polished cathedrals in the morning sun, arcades and a river with small boats for the multitudes of tourists who'd soon flock to Ailani's gates. All this would happen overnight, he promised, without a penny from the town. The only stipulation? A public garden containing a wide open field. Not a penny? The mayor asked, already gazing at the builder's blueprints. And so all who awoke the next morning found themselves living in a kind of city they'd only dreamed of. They marvelled at the cheese shops and fountains that had appeared overnight. Flower cellars were lined by the river, bicycles were there to be loaned, music was everywhere. And there in the center of town were the beautiful GARDENS of Ailani the gravel walkways raked, the spruce trees mulched, and the rose gardens buzzing with bees. By now most travelers are familiar with the famed botanical gardens. We've all seen the photographs in coffee table books and art galleries, and when we arrive at Ailani, we are told by the hotel concierge, the merchants and bankers, that the gardens aren't to be missed. The rose garden contains over 75 varieties, each seemingly more fragrant than the last. There are rows upon rows of tulips. You must see the Queen's pond with its floating lilies, the hanging wisteria by the ice cream stand, the orchids and wild asters. But listen closely. No matter which gate you enter, you're bound to make your way to an open field at the center of the park, where the sun falls kindly and the manicured lawn is spread like a blanket, inviting you to kick off your shoes and recline. Resist. If you pause but a moment, the pollen of the gardens will fill your breath as it lulls you to sleep. The slumber is the gateway to the builder's second city, and once entered, the doors of the field clang shut above, you'll awake to the deep, different, darker city of Flax. Some say it's the city of the dead, but those of us who live here don't feel deceased. There are still stores and carousels, apartment buildings and lamp posts, but the lights of this city feel murky, as though we're trapped beneath a pane of fogged glass. For a while we pounded against the belly of the field, which loomed above us. We could see the tourists in the gardens, the bicyclists who pedaled past, but there was no way to make them here. And so, like all the other tourists trapped here, your guidebook writers have learned to accept Thlax as our new home, a city from which one never departs. The beaches of Massapura. How many of you have gazed at mirages created by hot summer sun shimmering on blacktop, where, far along a highway's horizon, one sees the heat waves, where land becomes liquid? For anyone familiar with this most common mirage, you'll immediately recognize Massipora for what it is, nothing more than a receding illusion on the horizon, a trick of heat and light, a trap fashioned by the atmosphere to make us think we are drawing closer to its skyscrapers and amusement park rides, its restaurants and bistros, its citizens who wave to us from its borders, the most common lament of tourists trying to reach the beaches of Massipura. But they're all waving to me. And though it takes nothing more than common sense to dispel our illusion, consider for a moment the white sands would already be on every Travel Channel and glossy magazine cover if they could be reached. We can't help but want to arrive at the coastline which haunts us with its presence. We are, of course, all grown adults here, wise enough not to go wandering into the endless stretch of deadlands and mud cracked desert where only a few trees rise brittle from age and dry wind. We know to avoid squinting at the horizon for too long, where we swear we see a large sign announcing the town of Massipora. We know to turn back when the road ends, rather than leave our rental car abandoned on the side of the road and heft our luggage, our children, our husbands, wives and travel companions with us, don't we? Yes, certainly all this is true. We'd turn back if it weren't for the jovial citizens we see awaiting, beckoning us with waving hands. Come join us, they call, their voices lifted in friendship, their taverns open with waitresses carrying foamy heads of beer. And yes, your tour guides have gone walking, blind and ravenous for Mossipora's embrace, all the while dreaming of the joys we'll experience in that marvelous town, its beaches where we'll play in the waves like children, the bistros where charcuterie will be freshly sliced and served with cured olives, the bars where our glasses will be filled and refilled, and the chestnut trees beneath which we will picnic, watching the sun set over Mossipora's peach coloured waves. We're coming, we say, stepping further into the desert with our parched mouths. Alas, we've lost many of our finest guidebook writers this way. As for the rest of us, those saved by locals living in border towns who routinely search the area for foolish travelers like us, we acknowledge how difficult it is to return to the familiar hotel rooms we've booked. Having witnessed that strange and marvelous destination that exists so close to our own, we sense its presence wherever we go. As dusk settles along our hometown streets, we remember Massipura, and beneath the laughter of our spouse, we know there's another world, as densely packed with people as a pocket watch is filled with gears. Even now, as we write these words, we sense that below them is another world filled with white sand, where young men and women wave to us, its cafes filled with friends we've yet to meet, everyone ready to welcome our arrival. We lean closer, we smudge the ink, searching for this beautiful destination we've yet to visit.
- [46:55]
That was Dream Destinations from the Lost Travelers Tour Guide By Alexander Weinstein Narrated by Paul Bemer Alexander Weinstein is the founder and director of the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and the author of the short story collections Universal Love and Children of the New World, which was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Best Book of the Year by NPR and Electric Literature. His fiction has appeared in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and Best American Experimental Writing. His short story Saying Goodbye to Yang was adapted as the film after yang by A24 Films and was the recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at Sundance and the Boston Society of Film Critics award and Barack Obama's best films of 2022. Paul Bemer is an American actor best known for his numerous appearances in the Star Trek universe. In addition to Frasier, Judging Amy, Guiding Light, and All My Children. He is a 1992 Master's of Fine Arts graduate of the Professional Theater Training Program at the University of Delaware. As a narrator, Paul has won several Audiophile Earphones awards as well as an Audie Award.
- [48:17]
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- [48:35]
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- [48:46]
Narrator (Justine Eyre)
See full terms@mintmobile.com the war is over
- [48:50]
Glass Cannon Podcast Promo
and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered 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 emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPG 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.
- [49:51]
Sonic the Hedgehog Podcast Promo
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 they this story might be the only thing that can save their lives.
- [50:27]
Janina Edwards
Well, if that's all, I can just dispose of you.
- [50:30]
Wait, what?
- [50:34]
Sonic the Hedgehog Podcast Promo
All will be revealed in Sonic the Hedgehog Presents the Chaotix Case Files Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts when
- [50:44]
Janina Edwards
the Chaotix are old. The Case.
- [50:58]
Lightspeed Magazine is edited by John Joseph Adams and published by Adamant Press. The podcast is co produced by Stefan Ratnicki and Allison Belle Buse at Skyboat Media and the stories and podcast are copyright 2026. Post production was by Alex Barton at Phase Shift and our music was composed and performed by Jack Kincaid. Thanks for listening Starshine. This is your host Janina Edwards. Goodbye and mind the gap as you exit the spacecraft. It's a long way down,
- [51:39]
Sam.