Hello, my name is Alison Bell-Bews, 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 Shift, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, narrated by Stefan Rednicki. Coming up right after this message. The Warning Woods has haunting horror stories that are sure to linger with you long after listening. I'm Miles Tridel, writer and narrator of The Warning Woods.
Each week, I write an original scary story and share it with you. If you're into scary stories, you need to check out The Warning Woods. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just search. For The Warning Woods. And click play at your own risk. With something like 5 million podcasts, finding a really good one can take a ton of time. So let me recommend one.
It's called Something You Should Know. I'm the host, Mike Carruthers, and in each episode, we discuss topics that can be really helpful, like how to read people better, the psychology of crowds, or fun things like the story of Legos, or why you probably wouldn't be here if it weren't for horses. Something You Should Know is the name of it wherever you get your podcasts. And now... The Shift by Nina Kiriki Hoffman Once upon a time, there was a king who married a witch.
Together they had four sons and one daughter, and they were very happy as long as the king lived. When my father the king died, and my oldest brother was crowned king, Life went sideways for me, my sister, and our mother. The new king, our oldest brother, decided to use our sister as coin to buy our country's safety. He planned to marry her to the king across a perilous border to our south. When mother protested, he locked her in her room. He had forgotten her witch powers, but I hadn't.
As a fourth son in a country where only the first three sons mattered, one dedicated to the crown, one to the military, one to the church, I was of no use unless one of my older brothers died. My sister and I had spent our childhoods studying with our mother. My older brothers assumed my sister was learning how to be a princess, and they didn't care what I did with our mother.
They only mocked me for studying instead of fighting. They never wondered whether we were learning other skills. The night before my sister set off with her retinue to meet her new husband, I snuck into my mother's room. as I had been doing since she was in prison. She gave me the locket she had prepared and put on the one she'd made for herself. I slipped mine on.
The locket changed me from a scrawny prince into a sturdy girl. My mother's locket changed her from a tall, warm, attractive woman into a muscular, shorter... square-faced woman in the morning we dressed in servants clothes shouldered our satchels and joined the other servants leaving with my sister my sister's servants were startled when we joined them
Unsure of how strangers had arrived, my sister said we were gifts from her husband-to-be. The others gave us the most menial jobs. We did them without complaint. I spent the journey growing accustomed to my new body and dress. I felt strange and stronger in my new shape, a more solid self. Strange also. was the way others treated me fewer tests less respect easier connections with women more uneasiness in the presence of men
I learned how to cook for a small group of moving people. Some things my mother had already taught me. Peeling and chopping, spicing and cooking, cleaning up. All skills we used to craft spells. Only the intent had changed. The kitchen in our new castle looked much like the old one. Mortared stone walls. a mullioned window, a hearth big enough for a fire that could roast a hog, sheep or deer, with room for hanging cauldrons over the fire to make stews.
a clay oven for baking bread, tables and shelves for workspace and storage, racks from which hung pots and pans and spoons and knives, a scullery for washing up. Drying bunches of herbs spiced the air with thyme and rosemary, and crushed rushes underfoot gave off a fresh scent. We arrived when everyone in the kitchen was rushing to prepare the welcome meal for the new princess. Mother and I joined in the preparations, and the cook was glad of the extra hands. Later, after the feast ended...
The dishes had been washed and the leftover food shared between the servants. The cook gave us straw pallets. Mother and I settled near the hearth. The banked embers muttered in small crackles. making a song with the snores of others sleeping nearby, letting out a leak of light. I held my locket as I stared into my mother's eyes. Her eyes were a different shape.
and a paler color now. Her lips were fuller, her hair straw instead of shadow. A tiny shuffle in the rushes warned me. My sister knelt beside us. a hooded robe hiding her. I made space for her between us. She lay face up and whispered like the faintest breeze. The king is not terrible. Will you stay? breathed mother. We lay in silence. If we stayed, I would remain a girl. I remembered my first kiss back home with a knight's daughter by the woodshed.
our mouths sweet with the berries we'd picked, tentative, tender, and swift. I remembered my second kiss when my sister's guard caught me during the night on the journey here. He had covered my mouth with his hand to keep me quiet and dragged me away from our fire, pressed his mouth against mine, and shoved his tongue into my mouth. groping through my clothes to squeeze my breasts so hard he left bruises he tasted like force and ale and tooth rot and if my mother had not come
He would have hurt me much worse than he had. I stroked my thumb over my locket. I could take it off and be a skinny boy with no status again. The cook might take me on as a kitchen worker. or she might cast me out, and I would lose what family I had left. Mother knew powerful spells. She had used one on the guard who had kissed me.
He would never get any woman with child. Even to think of it would make him burn. She might be able to give me other protections. Here is better than home, whispered my sister. I remembered sword-fighting practice in the castle courtyard in the cold dawn with my older brothers, them swatting me with the flats of their blades and laughing, talking about whom they could marry me to, what advantages they might gain.
Are you comfortable? whispered my mother. I have my own room, and the door locks from the inside, my sister whispered. That will change when you marry. The king was kind. He cut my meat. and gave me a sharp knife with a silver handle and a leather sheath to hang on my belt. He had given her a weapon she could protect herself with. I want to stay, whispered my sister. After my sister left,
My mother asked me, Will you stay? Will you? For now. I lay in the kitchen darkness, the locket in my hand. I had a person to be. and a place to stay. Both strange to me. I could learn them. You have just heard The Shift by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki and directed by me.
Nebula and Stoker Award-winning writer Nina Kariki Hoffman has sold adult and young adult novels and more than 400 short stories. Her works have been finalists for the world fantasy, mythopiac, sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, and Endeavor Awards. Nina does production for the magazine of fantasy and science fiction. She teaches writing through Fairfield County Writer's Studio and Wordcrafters in Eugene. She lives in Oregon and plays mandolin, guitar.
fiddle, and bass with the Oregon old-time fiddlers. Ernina's publications of erna.us slash books slash hoffman dot html. Welcome back. Up next, we have Message in a Babel by Adam Troy Castro, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki, coming up right after this message.
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integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale ups online in person and on the go Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you sign up for your $1 a month trial at shopify.com slash setup Buckle up. We're going to light speed. Message in a Babel by Adam Troy Castro Level 1 2. Agent W4, Location 9. Dispatch 745-900044. Source 12AB. Certainty Level 1. Confidence Level.
9ZB-Warren Encrypted Level Gamma 1 Warning! The reading of this dispatch is prohibited for anyone but the intended recipient. There are no exceptions. If you possess the encryption key and are not the intended recipient, be apprised that the means of decoding the contents do not constitute license.
Penalties for the possession of the following include life imprisonment or immediate execution. If you are delivered this message by accident, either delete it or if a hard copy, seal it within an opaque receptacle. and store in a secure location. Again, use decryption only if addressee or risk attached penalties. By authority of, authority XXXXXX.
Redacted in cover message. Level 2 From General Redacted Chief of Confederate Intelligence To Operative N Purple Orchid xxxxxxxxxx subject warning the following correspondence has also been decrypted via a level two secrecy algorithm It is designed to read like a personal letter and may be carried in hard copy as long as it remains in the possession of its current recipient. It is, as per custom, itself encrypted using the Level 2 algorithm.
Please address at the key provided in secure location X. Italics optional. Dear Shirley, I dearly hope this letter finds you in good health. I have, after a delightful journey of several days, arrived at the villa offered by cousin Bran, and am delighted by the climate, the surroundings, and the kindness of neighbors.
bran has left a note detailing how to find everything and so i'm well i watched our neighbor the viscount riding his stallion in the fields and believed him to be most pleasing to the eye and an excellent candidate for the husband I have traveled so long to find. I penned him a letter and am hoping that he accepts my invitation, but he has not had time to reply. Hope springs eternal.
I miss you and I trust that the dogs are not being a problem. Please do think of joining me here at some point in July or August. The sun is spectacular. Sincerely and with most gracious love, Ramona. End message. Level 3 From Intelligence Directorate N Office of the Phoenix Desk of Interstellar Defense Codex 3798 7909 73334 790707 2739 Encrypted Not Actual Codex Tattoo Z Two Sparrows Nesting
War materials sensitivity, porcelain. Sensitivity advisory. Again, if you are not the intended recipient, do not decrypt or risk the penalties. Current danger to recipient, green. Subject. Expected Assault on Outer System Colonies. To whom it concerns. Evidence suggests that the hostiles are shipping equipment and personnel. in vast quantities to the staging areas attached. Data transfer is at an intensity not seen since the last system war.
with only about 1% of the current traffic successfully captured and decrypted. The current theory is that only 1% of the data is actionable, the rest being chaff. Infiltrate and advise. XR2. Level 4. Date redacted. From Lt. Jasper Boothby. Department of Procedures and Arrangements. Encryption level, Velcro.
8798-6969-86966-7543-5434-22267-1111. Rowboat. Sigmund Alpha 12. Personal to recipient, you have succeeded in finding the fourth message embedded within the message encrypted via the method Russian Nesting Doll. Each decrypted message will reveal another message that will need to be decrypted by another message. There are, unfortunately, 14 subsequent levels of encoded messages.
each one to be decoded using the standard protocols. You must find the key hidden in each dispatch in order to find the next message hidden inside it. And as per standard procedure, the use of an incorrect key at any point will result in the production of a false message consisting of anything from personal correspondence to warning of imminent attack.
When you are done decrypting all 14 nested messages, you will apply Key Lincoln 5 to the entire text, compiled in proper sequence, in order to obtain the final. urgent text. This is my cue to be frank with you. I really do despise you, Smedley. I always have since university. I hated that inseparable look of satisfaction you gave off.
I hated the sense you always had that your connections would help you worm your way past the queue and into the hallowed chambers where the decisions were made. I hated your mustache. and the perversity to wear it somewhere under your nose. I hated that you had more than one. I hated your know-it-all attitude toward the war. Your stories about how your father, the chancellor, had a secret plan to win it while everybody else in government was still putting on their shoes.
I hated how you swept in and snatched up that lovely girl who I was just starting to get on with, and I hated that you insisted on calling her Mrs. Smedley from the very first moment you met her. I hate that while you sit in your office overlooking the city and pontificating about armaments and Proust,
The rest of us have to sit at our little desks in that waterlogged room beneath the leaky piping and speak in that code you have forced us to use. The one with all the fricatives that make us spit. I do, however, love that this deep in the levels of coding, nobody can accuse me of venting because you are not Smedley.
but some hapless and nameless field operative in a basement room much like the one I just described. Here's the thing, operative who is not Smedley. Nothing about the current campaign is a joke. The aliens possess technology well beyond our imagining and are dedicated to our absolute annihilation. It is now believed that they hold within their armada a weapon capable of destroying us all.
and that they intend to use it in an interval as short as the gap between this sentence and the next. That you are now alive to read the next sentence. is a small miracle that might well be attributed to your above average reading speed. That you can now read the following sentence means that you're likely skimming. This means that you may be missing vital details that a more careful perusal conducted with somebody with a life expectancy that permits a careful and dedicated study would catch.
Your presence in this current sentence is enough to make us wonder whether you're really paying attention at all. You are now definitely missing some things. An enemy would take advantage of this. I confess that I'm sleeping with your wife. Level 5 Operation N8092101807E07 Wombat. Code 5RsNUD. 13 lines of random symbols redacted. 17 hours of line noises redacted. Decryption key Z.
298098098 applied. Be advised. Smedley has drowned inside a 50-gallon barrel of honey. He was found upside down in the canister, bound and naked. with nothing on his person but a slip of paper bearing the legend, I believe that I have miscalculated. No further messages from Smedley are to be considered actionable. Full explanation will be found in the embedded message within this embedded message. It should take you no more than 70 hours to decode. Proceed with haste. Level 6
8098 E435348 Foxtrot WooHa 50 lines of confirmation code redacted. Photo of an elephant giving birth for some reason. The following is the most recent embedded message. It is the only coherent segment of a text that is multiple times the length of the Oxford English Dictionary. The rest is random syllabification.
and about 100,000 repetitions of the word Hammersmith. It is believed that each repetition is another embedded message representing over one million words of text. Each of those, it is now believed, embeds another one million messages. It is significantly more than any one human being can decrypt even with cybernetic means in less than a lifetime.
This does, however, seem to be the most sensible summary of what's going on. Please forward to all relevant contacts. There is no Smedley. There is no Boothby. There is no espionage bureaucracy torturing its agents with messages within messages within messages. The coding equivalent of a zoologist neck deep in a proctological examination of a hippo.
in search of the cell phone some tourist dropped into its mouth. The intrepid veterinarian might recover some photos of the tourist in a Hawaiian shirt, waving at the camera while the floor show at the wilderness lodge plays out behind him, but he will still be painted in dung from the neck up, an extreme price to pay for intelligence of zero significance.
This is what you need to know. There is no Smedley. There is no Boothby. There is nobody but yourself. You have been wading through something that has touched truth. but is no longer truth. What has been embedded in this infinite series of nonsense messages is the entire human race. stored for safekeeping after a catastrophe of universal import. Get to the end of my chain. Decrypt the long chain of code you will find there.
feed that into the machine you will construct following the instructions at the end of another chain, add the chemical ingredients to be found in yet another, and one of humanity's many stored billions. will slide out the end of the chute, complete in body and personality, to assist you in the restoration of another in your stored supply of mewling humanity.
Of course, mewling humanity being what we know it to be, chances are nearly infinite to nearly zero that the first person you have rescued at random... will be only good at harassing you over the estimated arrival time of lunch. We are sorry about this. We neglected to put any labels on these files. They approximately...
200 world-class savants who were responsible for this project unfortunately left the grunt work to clerks who left them all unlabeled. By the time anyone in authority realized what had been done, All of humanity was a randomized filing cabinet. You will need to do an awful lot of decrypting in multiple layers to find someone equipped to assist.
And by the time you have replicated the population in numbers of any sort, the mob will be dominated by those who think the whole project is stupid and that the files should be randomized. so that nobody still embodied only in code will ever emerge and take all their stuff. Nevertheless, you must persist. Because it is only those 200 who know the threat that faces us all, the one that will yet re-emerge and destroy us if...
The next 500,230 words have been corrupted. Decryption code attached. Level 7. In its entirety. How are you? We are fine. Message in a Babel by Adam Troy Castro, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki, and directed by me. Adam Troy Castro made his first nonfiction sale to Spy Magazine in 1987.
His books to date include four Spider-Man novels, three novels about his profoundly damaged, far-future murder investigator, Andrea Court, and six middle-grade novels about the dimension-spanning adventures of young Gustav Gloom. Adam's works have won the Philip K. Dick Award and the Saiyan, Japan, and have been nominated for eight Nebulas, three Stokers, two Hugos, one World Fantasy Award, and internationally, the Ignotus, Spain.
the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire, France, and the Cour de la Suisse Prize, Germany. The audio collection, My Wife Hates Time Travel and Other Stories, Skyboat Media, features 13 hours of his fiction, including The New Stories, The Hour in Between, and Big Stoop and the Buried Big Glowing Booger. In 2022, he came out with two collections, his The Author's Wife vs. the Giant Robot, and his 30th book, A Touch of Strange. Adam was an author guest of honor at 2023's World Fantasy Convention.
Adam lives in Florida with a pair of chaotic paladin cats. Stefan Rudnicki is a Grammy-winning audiobook producer and an award-winning narrator who has won 17 Audi 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 Semi-Prozine in 2014 and 2015.
In humanity's search for other worlds, we found something unexpected. It's a massive collection of tiny pocket realities, and each one is a story. So we can actually transcend our usual four dimensions of space and time to go physically into these stories? Yes, using the MusePod. But when we explored those stories, things didn't go as planned. Mr. Darcy, that horrid man. I am Mr. Sherlock Holmes. None of us have been the same since Beth died.
What happens when classic stories go wrong? I go in to fix them. Oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo? Subscribe and listen to Muse, the latest audio drama from Dayton Writers Movement and Realm. I am Dracula, and I bid you welcome. If you want a person dead, you call a hitman. If you want a monster dead, you call Lincoln Franks. But you better be able to pay the price he asks because Lincoln doesn't work for free. Pay to slay, bitches.
Slay Season 2 is the current season of Scott Sigler Slices, a fiction podcast with dark tales hacked from the mind of a number one New York Times bestselling author. Slay is a foul-mouthed monster. killing drug addled anti-hero story that's john wick meets buffy meets breaking bad slay season one is complete and waiting for you in the feed as is scott's short story anthology blood is red scott's or wherever you get your podcasts.
Everything feels too loud to me these days. Everything feels like too much and I find myself in a body that is both the one I have always lived in and one I no longer recognize. I am filled with worry, doubt, but not fear, because I know what's out there now. There are shadows around me, around us all, that are darker than I ever thought possible. There are monsters just outside your door. The undead walk among us. They need help. And I am one of those who is tasked with helping them.
Not because of any particular calling or destiny. It is my day job. Well, night job now. My boss brought me into the other side of our world, one I never thought could ever be real. Because I died. and she brought me back from the darkness into a whole world of night. From the creators of Parkdale Haunt comes Woodbine, a podcast about monsters, mysteries, and new beginnings. Season one is out now, distributed by Realm.
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 Alison Bell-Buse at Skyboat Media. And the stories and podcasts are copyright 2025. Post-production was by Alex Barton at Phase Shift, and our music was composed and performed by Jack Kincaid. Once again, I am Alison Bell Bewes, and I hope these stories gave you something new. Thank you for listening.