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Produced by Skyboat Media, and under the direction of Grammy and Audie award-winning narrator and producer Stefan Rudnicki, our podcast features audiobook-style recordings of four of the eight stories we publish each month in Lightspeed, released more or less on a weekly basis. To subscribe (free!) to the podcast, you'll either need our podcast RSS feed and put that into your favorite podcast client, or you can just subscribe via iTunes. All of our podcasts from Lightspeed: Year One are also available as an audiobook from Audible.com and Downpour.com.
The sun was sinking toward the horizon like a brass penny dropped in muddy water by the time I rode back into New Providence. My Halfie’s mechanical shoes struck sparks off the metal road plates, each impact sending little jolts of pain through my spine. Those hours of riding and tracking had taken their toll, but it wasn’t the kind of tired that sleep could fix. The kind of weary that comes from knowing too much, seeing too clear.
Dear Members of the Community,
As we begin yet another fall semester in the throes of the rogue timestream unleashed on our campus, I cannot help but take a moment to marvel at just how vibrant our community has become. In addition to our current residents, our University’s campus grounds and buildings have come to support thousands of students, staff, affiliates, and visitors from past, future, as well as alternate Universities.
New Providence sparkled like fool’s gold in the distance, all gleaming spires and whirring clockwork, nothing like the two-bit townships I usually rode through. My Halfie tensed beneath me, his wolf-hackles rising at the stink of machine oil and steam that drifted our way. I dug my spurs in gentle-like, just enough to remind him who was boss without drawing blood. Been doing that less lately—seemed like we were finally reaching an understanding, him and me.
When we moved Dad to the care facility, his only complaint was the Wi-Fi. “Laggy,” he called it when he was having a good day. “Fucking piece of shit,” he called it the rest of the time.
At first I was relieved. I’d been worried that he’d bristle at the cramped room, like a zoo animal pacing its enclosure in a sad documentary. But he never said a word about the bedsit quarters or the unfamiliar, ever-churning staff.
And all the devils are here.
“What’s that from?” Millie asks as she gets her coat.
I stand at the back window, looking out. Usually, you can see the downtown skyline from this position. Today, it’s just the hellmouth. A long tube that looks like an esophagus that’s been yanked out of a kaiju and dangles from the ground. Bloody, meaty, smoking.
The only sound Zero heard in their helmet was their own hyperventilating and the gentle pings from their pegasus.
> waiting . . .
> waiting . . .
> communication received
> confirmation of countdown initiation: 30 seconds
I beg you, let me tell you about my daughter. My brilliant daughter will be one of the four people who survive their airplane crashing into a giant. Or, more accurately, a giant swiping their airplane out of the sky. Perhaps it meant to catch, or caress. My daughter will never know. Usually airlines predict giants ahead of time, from sightings or seismic activity, but this one was not easily seen and quick as a whip, like my daughter.
Jay found himself sitting across from a bearded old man in voluminous maroon robes. “Why are you here?” the robed man asked. “I was sentenced to VSIM rehabilitation by my judge-counselor.” “Yes,” replied the robed man. “You would choose the literal interpretation of the question, wouldn’t you?”
The First Emperor was the first and last of true immortals on earth, and no winter touched his realm. No autumn wind blew. His orchards bloomed and fruited and bloomed again. In his court, death and old age were shut out. And every day, he drank a cup of tea brewed in the dew of lotus flowers, which had been collected that morning from the lotuses that grew in a heaven-touched lake at the easternmost point of his palace grounds.
This was in August of 2019. A day-old newspaper reported civil wars in Somalia and Yemen. A gunman killed twenty-two people in an El Paso Walmart. Jeffrey Epstein had taken a plea deal, promising to name names, promising to name the name.
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