Greetings, and welcome to the Lightspeed Magazine podcast. Stefan Rudnicki here. Today, for your listening pleasure, we have... two astonishing stories. First up is the short shot to Navigate the Night by Rich Larson, narrated by Alison Bell-Bews, right after this message. Can you change your personality? How does peer pressure work? Should you ever really trust your gut?
These are just a few of the topics we've recently tackled on my podcast, Something You Should Know. It's a podcast where leading experts give you valuable intel that you can use in your life today. I'm the host, Mike Carruthers, and with over 1,000 episodes and over 4,000 mostly 5-star reviews, I invite you to check out Something You Should Know, wherever you listen.
The Warning Woods has haunting horror stories that are sure to linger with you long after listening. I'm Miles Treidel, 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. And now, Alison Bell Bute. To navigate the night.
By Rich Larson For the seventh dusk in a row, the human girl comes to our tree with an offering. She approaches on all fours. moving almost as clumsily as I do when I crawl from the knot hole and amble out along my favorite branch. Her face is hidden by a ceremonial mask. It's a simple wooden thing. not half so ornate as the ones I know humans fashioned in the time of our ancestors, but the resemblance is clear. The tall, flaring ears, the elaborate ridges and ripples of a nose. Again?
The squealing question prickles my fur a moment before my mother alights, hooking her claws to the branch and swinging down to join me. She's stubborn, this one. The human chants her prayer, begging for the impossible. then rises up on her toes and feels for a crack in the bark of the tree. She's wise enough to wedge her offering of honeycomb there instead of leaving it on the perilous forest floor. She asks for Nock's gift, I explain.
She wants to craft echoes. You understand me, the girl calls up at us. My grandmother told me so. Stop ignoring me. Mother gives a chitter of laughter. I stay silent. I know you can help me, too. The girl's voice, so slow and low compared to ours, has a strange tremor to it. She said, In the old days, if someone really believed, if someone made the right sacrifices, you would bless them with the sound sight. I turn to Mother. Is it true? I ask.
It's true, Mother cocks her head. But those were the old days, back when there were proper temples, back when priests made offerings every night and hunters scoured the owls from our woods. She did not mean to say owls. I can tell from the way her head twitches as if she can bite the word back inside her mouth. The word owls makes her remember the night that is only a dark blur to me.
The night a pale monster struck me out of the sky and tore my left wing into fluttering shreds. You must be hungry, love, Mother says. She turns to track a ghost moth as it loops past. panting the air with quicksilver waves. I'll bring you that fat one, she pauses. Forget the human. They've forgotten us. Not all of them, I say.
Knowing she will bring me the moth is an apology, and knowing I must pretend it isn't. The girl knows all the prayers. Mother stretches both her beautiful wings. Only words, love. I'll be back in a moment. I know you're there, the human calls, voice higher and quicker now. I can hear you talking. Please, please ask Nock to help me. She has the whole day to see, Mother snarls, angry at the human, because she cannot be angry at the owl. What does she need the night for? She drops away.
joining the tumult of hunters seeking their first meal of the evening. Watching the effortless snap and billow of her wings makes my own ache. She'll be back to feed me, and so will others. All sisters and cousins strong enough to hunt more than they need. But for now, I am alone with the human, who makes a noise I have not heard before. Choked. Wet. strong enough to shake her enormous body. Then she wails, almost how the fox or coyote wails. In some strange way, it's familiar.
It sounds the way I feel when I remember winter's approach, when I remember the cold will force all my sisters and cousins and even my mother to migrate south, when I remember I will stay here and I will die. The girl pulls off her mask. Suddenly, the way she stumbles to the tree, the way she runs her hand so carefully along its bark, gains new meaning. Her eyes are gouged from their sockets.
The twin slashes of scar tissue, rippled and glistening, make me feel the owl's talons all over again. But the wounds are more precise than mine, more deliberate. and I have seen humans craft tools sharper than any tooth or claw. A thought turns my stomach cold and hollow. This was done to her by her own kind. I understand now why she begs for Nock's gift. She has no daylight, nor does she have any way to navigate the night. Someone has put her permanently into the dark. I nearly caught it.
Mother is back, clutching a pudgy larva instead of the ghost moth. That greedy pup Chemesh, he swooped in right over my shoulder. The wriggle of the larva makes my mouth water. but there's something I need to ask her first. In the old days, when we did help the humans, I pause, watching as the girl dons her mask and stumbles slowly away. How did it work? How did Nock teach them the echo craft? Mother blinks at me. A bat must intercede, she says, to give Nock's gift to a human.
The bat must surrender it themselves and live only by their eyes. I have eyes. I miss the world of quicksilver echoes, of sounds that dance and shapeshift in the night. but I am learning to trust my eyes and my human. She moves deathly through the forest now, day or night, singing from her mouth and nose like a true child of knock.
That first night she found me at the base of the tree, the night I said my goodbyes to mother and the flurry of siblings testing their wings for the long flight south, she carried me to her stone roost in her arms. She fed me the honeycomb, and tried to catch me midges. For a few perfect hours, as the echo craft left me and grew in her, we spoke of pain and how to survive it. Now we understand each other very well. Now I ride gripping her shoulder, and I like it nearly as much as my old branch.
You have just heard To Navigate the Night by Rich Larson, narrated by Alison Bell Buse. Rich Larson was born in Niger, has lived in Spain and Czech Republic, and is currently based in Canada. He is the author of the novels Annex and Ymir, as well as over 250 short stories, some of the best of which can be found in his collections Tomorrow Factory.
and the sky didn't load today and other glitches. His fiction has been translated into over a dozen languages, among them Polish, French, Romanian, and Japanese. and adapted into an Emmy-winning episode of Love, Death, Plus Robots. His latest book, Change Log, drops September 2025. Find him at Instagram.com. slash RichLarsonWrites and Patreon.com slash RichLarson. Alison Bellebuse is Skyboat's publishing and production coordinator.
as well as a director of over 150 adamant podcasts and over 50 audiobooks, including her Earphones Award-winning compilation, Egyptian Nights and Other Tales of Imagination and Romance, by Alexander Pushkin, and the Audi-nominated The Quest of the Silver Fleece by W. E. B. Du Bois. She wrote and narrated the introductions for four original audiobook compilations.
including Best Cases of the Continental Op and The Best of Catherine Mansfield. Aside from direction and production, Alison is one of the hosts of Adamant's Lightspeed and Nightmare short-shot podcasts. and has also begun narrating stories as well. Allison was the outstanding graduating senior of the English department at San Diego State University, where she minored in French and in interdisciplinary studies.
through the Weber Honors College. Outside of Skyboat, she is also the lead singer, rhythm guitarist, pianist, and co-songwriter for Meteor Street, a four-piece literary rock band. based in Los Angeles. Welcome back. Up next we have... Does Harlan Latner Dream of Infected Sheep? Part 1 by Sarah Langan. Narrated by me, Stefan Rudnicki, 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 one dollar a month trial at shopify.com slash setup Buckle up, we're going to light speed. Does Harlan Latner Dream of Infected Sheep? Part 1 by Sarah Langen January 16, 2034. From the Associated Press. Congo CEO Jeff Jassy is expected to testify in Congress over his company's software update.
which literally broke the internet last month. For 18 seconds, every warehouse, screen, and air traffic control system went dark. Initially invented to assist Congo warehouse workers retrieve stock, Congo Software is now the global number one employee-employer interface with a 98% market share. The body opened too easily.
like paper wrapping on room-temperature butter this isn't right ladner said at first to himself then louder for the trauma nurse and anesthesiologist to hear the patient a john doe had arrived at the e r reporting pain in his right side and copious bloody vomit a c t showed a twisted large intestine and organ dysplasia
When Lattner got the alert, he'd been trying to read the heart as a lonely hunter, but mostly worrying about the big reunion. He'd gained 30 pounds since college, or maybe 40. Would Jerry recognize him? Was Jerry even going? Also, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was a really sad book about two best friends, or maybe lovers. They're the only people who understand one another. Then one of them goes crazy.
and leaves the other bereft. It was a poor reading selection for a man going through a divorce, living in a divorced, sad-man apartment, with deep-piled carpet and slivers of bar soap caked to the ceramic-tiled dish in the bathroom. He should have picked an upbeat novel, something like Heaven is Real, So Don't Worry So Much, or Dumpy White Guy Success Stories. He'd been relieved when the hospital had pinged his home console.
Glad for the excuse to leave the house in the middle of the night, where he'd been sitting in bed eating peanut butter dipped in granulated sugar with his index finger, nothing but a suicide novel and his own insomnia to keep him company. now looking at the patient's innards he was no longer glad he was freaked out are you seeing this he asked the anesthesiologist a twenty-something
who'd checked his Congo app every step to make sure he was doing the job right. Instead of headsets, the younger generation liked to implant their Congo relays against either temporal bone. You could tell because the skin ahead of their ear canals blinked green whenever they were interfacing, which was most of the time. At first, Latner had tried to talk him through the procedure, set him at ease.
But like Latner's teen kids, who also thought he was stupid and irrelevant, the anesthesiologist had ignored him, trusting only the electronic humanoid voice in his ear. Look. Latner spread the Balfour retractor, opened the incision wide, a six-inch slash in this John Doe's abdomen. It should have been hemorrhaging, but it wasn't. No bleeding at all.
There were also no discernible organs. Instead, all the way to the spine and lateral ribs, Latner found wide organic tubing the color of faded pink pepto-bismol. Green light blinking, the anesthesiologist didn't know what he was looking at. Just nodded with fake bravado. You? Ladner asked the nurse, Ocean Phillips. She was old guard, from before even Ladner's time.
She'd outlasted all the docs she'd come up with who'd gotten cancer or some other toxic exposure disease. You think of hospitals as clean, but a lot of chemicals keep them that way. Physician, heal thyself. So many docs had wanted to work past retirement, but none had had the health. Ocean was skinny and short, with curly silver and black hair. She'd refused to wear the Congo headset interfaces required of most nurses.
Her seniority, all those years of accumulated knowledge, had made her too valuable to fire, at least for now. Latner imagined that Ocean was just as competent in her private life as her professional one. probably had four kids and ten grandkids, babysat them all, kept a clean house, everybody had jobs. Beloved matriarch. How does a person become such a thing? Are they taught it?
Do they just know? Ladner widened the ball for a retractor. Where there should have been a stomach and large intestine, all he saw was more coiled pink worm-like tubing. He indicated for ocean. to reach her gloved hand into the man's internal cavity, root around. See if you can find any organs, he said. Nuh-uh, no way, she said. So hold the instrument for me, he said.
She took it. He rooted on his own, even as he felt a strange retraction all along his scalp, a coldness. Was this a parasite? A giant worm? Ladner found no heart or intestines, no lungs or alimentary canal. The entirety of John Doe's internal chest cavity was this simple coiled tubing held in webbed place by what appeared to be
florid and colorful fungal hyphae, like the mushrooms you might find in a forest. What fluid existed was thin, watery pink, specked with black particles. The whole thing pulsed like breath. up and down, in and out. This is a prank, Ocean said. Someone's messing with us. Back in med school, this guy Cameron Van Lieden stole the arm off a cadaver.
and stuck it to the side of a toll booth. Another time somebody put human eyes in a bowl on their anatomy professor's desk. But people didn't play those kinds of jokes anymore. It was a sensitive world. where everybody traveled with lapdogs and cried over microaggressions even as the roads collapsed and the bombs sailed overhead. The worm-like tubing was warm and pulsing through Ladner's gloves.
He'd never have known this until right now, but a person innately intuits the presence of sentience. This thing was, or had once been, human. It's not a prank. This is living tissue, he said. Organic. He noodled some more as Ocean, an excellent nurse, anticipated the direction of his hands and adjusted the retractor accordingly. The flowery tubing...
a kind of uniform elementary canal pulsed oddly in the section lower down with backflow like a heart murmur. Then he found the problem. It was knotted near the groin. For this reason, The whole apparatus was in a spasm. I see what's wrong. It's this swell right here, he said. Should I untangle it? The kid anesthesiologist was typing on the corner Congo console.
What are you doing? Ladner asked him. I'm asking the software what to do, he said. The kid's skin was pale with a greenish-yellow hue. These young people didn't get out much. It's routing me to surgical headquarters in India. I think there's a real person there. What's it say so far? This guy's in arrest. I'm still at the prompts. It's got all these questions. I'm not at the part yet where I explain the problem.
There's not a multiple choice for this. Latner looked at Ocean. She shrugged a kind of, don't ask me, they're paying you the big bucks. Which wasn't true. He wasn't paid big bucks. sometimes it felt like he was paid with canned cream of corn and pez beads of sweat rolled all down latner's forehead the guy's whole insides pulsed and swelled
fluid rushing into the knot and getting trapped there. Soon he'd go into a cyanotic failure. Ladder needed to do something. Still, if he failed to untangle this knot correctly, he might kill the guy. There'd be an inquiry. The higher-ups would review the recording and quibble over every decision he was about to make. They'd look at all his prior reviews. They'd ask him why right now.
He hadn't sewn the guy up and awaited further instructions. It's fine if the outcome is good. Nobody cares how you got there. But when it's bad, you're neck deep. Looking at the throbbing innards of this human-shaped being. He thought of his rich wife who'd left him. He thought of his kids who didn't like him. He thought of Jerry, whom he hadn't seen in over 20 years. He was a free agent. What did he have to lose?
You got an atraumatic clamp, he asked. Ocean handed it over. He clamped the knotted body to hold it still. But shit. The metal tore right through John Doe's soft tissue. slicing it open. His whole body went into a spasmodic fit, shoulders slapping steel. Hold him, Latner cried. Ocean gave Latner a look that meant, I'd better not go down for this.
then she held the man when that didn't work she climbed up on the table and shoved her knees up against his shoulders pinning him that slowed john doe down enough that latner could carefully release the clamp without tearing any more tissue, that tender pulsing canal. Doe's body went scarily still. Torn tissue bled strange and slow, its color cotton candy pink.
vital signs going flat. Whatever this was, human or pod person, it was dying. Panting, his mask wet with old breath, he reached inside the patient's cavity and unknotted the canal. like untwisting moss-slippery boat rope. Right away, the thrumming stopped. John Doe's fluid whooshed all in the same direction. Vitals rose slightly. With a pulse of 20, and oxygen levels at 45%. The patient stabilized. Classified Internal Memorandum, Congo Corp. February 13, 2032
To Micah Peters, Congo CEO. Lorna Latner, Department of Innovation Legal. Frank Henry, Congo Trust Reserve Applications. From Paul McKenzie, R&D. Simon Iscariot, R&D, Lucas Johnson, R&D, to our senior officers. Imagine a world without pain. Imagine drudgery without suffering. The new Congo application offers exactly this. For years we've heard the cries from employees. At last we've found our solution. It is with great pride that we proudly introduce Congo.
5.0, the solution to modern life. An hour later, Ladner watched the playback of the surgery. In it, he appeared especially fat, bald, and middle-aged. This was not revelatory, but rather a familiar disappointment. The recording evaluated his performance according to a rubric that took agility, decisiveness, cleanliness, and politeness into account.
He'd gotten a two out of ten. Congo stopped the program on Latner as he'd asked the nurse what was happening and announced spreading negative emotions, halting activity, paralysis. Latner entered a dispute ticket, upon which he wrote, the guy's organs were dissolving on the table. He's either an alien or a symbiote. Fear and paralysis were appropriate responses.
But the algorithm had no matches for dissolving organs or alien, so the dispute was denied. The film continued. Lattner watched his too-flawed, too-human body on screen. He watched himself fish inside the patient with his hands. Hands aren't allowed, Kongo's voice announced. Error, error. But screw Kongo, because he saw with great satisfaction.
that he'd completed the surgery with competence. He'd saved this thing, whatever it was. As Cargo continued to deliver more advice, if patient sues for malpractice, please be aware the hospital will not pay for your lawyer. Use of hands is a violation. He found himself smiling. He'd been down on himself lately, but he was a good surgeon. He sent the footage to everyone on staff, plus his old colleagues, plus Congo.
with its tentacles on every continent yeah he muttered as he watched the footage again and again that's not human is it human that's not human a half hour later No one had gotten back to him. He stopped the triage. According to the nurse there, John Doe had shown up late the night before with a swollen abdomen and amnesia. She had given him Congo e-file paperwork.
told him to fill out what he could then he'd thrown up blood and fainted how did he present to you she looked at him blankly was he cognizant were his wits about him the nurse shrugged She was wearing her headset, listening to a voice in there instead of him. What was it telling her? Was it even talking or was it playing slow soporific music to soothe the monotony of her work? I don't remember.
He went to surgical processing on the second floor. Can I see his clothes? He asked the two admins. They exchanged glances. This was unheard of. Doctors never picked through patient clothing. It's not allowed, they finally agreed. You could hold it up in the Ziploc. Just let me see. I won't touch anything. I have reason to believe he carried an infectious disease. You'll need permission. I can't take something out unless I log it, and I can't log it unless I have permission.
The admins said in flat stereo, each clearly repeating the instructions that had come through their headsets. Ladner looked at one, then the other. When I went into medicine, I thought people would respect me.
They looked back at him like being a middle-aged white man was a sin and he deserved to die. Maybe, in the name of all privileged people everywhere, he deserved exactly this. But as a man whose life had turned out pretty shitty, who'd come from nothing and had the terrible suspicion he was headed for nothing again it felt unfair in search of permission he went to the dean of surgical excellence
a nice smart guy with hands as precise as baked potatoes. Management had promoted him past his ability just to get him away from patients. Through a smart Congo investment, his dad owned the hospital. I got your message. Fascinating case. It looks like infection by invasive species to me. But I can't grant you access, Dr. Tucker Rhodes said. Actually, Congo can't grant it.
There's no specific form, and they don't let me create new ones. They have to be pre-existing. There's a real person in Madison, Wisconsin, apparently, but the whole time is two days. They're going to call me back. A man who'd made only safe decisions his whole life and had consequently grown tired of his life. Ladner didn't give a shit. This won't wait two days. What about next of kin?
If there's no next of kin, which there isn't, I can claim that. Tucker typed into the Congo console. These were mounted touchscreens. The attendant wireless headsets most people were required to wear were ergonomic. expanding or shrinking to fit inside ear canals, and so porous human immune systems rarely rejected them. You could, and people did, wear them indefinitely. They'd been known to weave inside skin.
attaching there just like the implants attached to bone. Less than a week ago, the new Congo 5.0 app broke the internet. For nearly a minute, everything went dark. Latner had been reading hard as a lonely hunter in his apartment. For him, the world already felt like it was ending, so the blackout hadn't alarmed him as much as validated him. The body count was high. People fell off balconies.
stumbled into traffic, were crushed by the boxes they were receiving, crashed on highways, expired on blacked out ventilators that no one thought to reset once power returned, fell out of the sky. on Lost Plains. You'd think after something like that that people would be pissed off at Congo. And they were. But more than that, they doubled down. They got more implants. They installed more consoles.
People are strange. Ugh, Tucker said as he pressed both hands to his ribcage and pain grunted. You okay? Ladner asked. Yeah, just ate something bad a week ago and it hasn't gotten better. Listen, if I put you down as next of kin, I'm not taking the fall if something happens. I'll say you lied and told me he was your cousin. You think I'll get in trouble? Tucker looked around his crumbling office.
where papers filled in triplicate lined the walls, and three consoles were running at once. Though he was still a youngish in his late forties, his skin looked sick. Why was everyone so green lately? Who knows? Tucker asked. There's so much noise lately, it's hard to think. Ladner got his way. Tucker filed next of kin. He went to the on-call surgical manager who told him that the permission needed to be printed and signed.
and filed on a special Congo app. He mastered all this, returned to surgical processing. I have it, he said. But the people at the desk were new and didn't care that he'd been through an ordeal. They just gave him the Ziploc. This contains some ordinary stretch fabric jeans, a jacket, and a T-shirt with a bib of bloody vomit that was red, not pink.
The shoes were decent work boots with worn treads, no jewelry. Wrapped within all this, he found a Congo employee badge from the warehouse outside town. Instead of a name, it had a barcode. Did you guys see this? Did you call anyone at Congo? They looked at him like, who's this asshole trying to assign us extra work? Just then, the head ER doctor on duty pinged him with a response to the video he'd sent.
Is this a joke? No, he answered. Whoa, did you get a tox report? Pending. I sent samples to all three labs. Typing dots arrived. They stayed there for a while, then went away. Head ER doc was a political position. He probably didn't want the stain of this on his record. Also, it didn't fit into a neat box. Would be a lot of extra work. Dawn was just breaking.
Ladner was headed for his locker when the e-file announced that his John Doe had been moved from observation to recovery. He headed there, thinking again about the pulsing tubing, the missing organs. the strange floral growths. Was it a fungal infection, a parasite, a symbiote that was eating him while keeping him alive? Was it contagious? He arrived at the hospital bed.
The patient, who should have been unconscious, was gone. January 23, 2034 From the AP News in a Minute The measure to provide all public school children with three Congo 5.0 implants and consoles passed last Friday amidst vocal protesters outside City Hall shouting, down with AI slavery.
Frustrations with Congo have reached a frenzied peak in the aftermath of the internet blackout two weeks ago. In other news, SS Prometheus, a mining ship en route home from Mercury, was blown up by terrorists last week. A week after the surgery, Latner was headed for his college reunion in Scranton. He rented a Congo self-driving car. For legal reasons, these cars were equipped with emergency human drivers. The guy said,
unobtrusive up front, his implant flashing green, reminding Latner of a mannequin. This wasn't new. Most jobs over the years had switched from autonomous to drudge work. The people who performed them tended to recede inside their own skin. But this dude was especially stiff, his breath especially slow. He could have been sleeping with his eyes open.
The trip from Harrisburg took two hours. Ladner passed semi-odorless gas the whole ride. He'd done something very vain and ordered three girdles from Congo. He'd tried on all.
picked the tightest. It wasn't comfortable. When you're on your way to your reunion and you're going by yourself because you haven't kept in touch with anyone, some thoughts enter your mind. For instance, was he a failure when his wife lorna told him she'd fallen in love with someone else he'd at first been surprised then relieved they'd been married almost twenty years and every day of that marriage he'd woken up thinking
The idea that time is finite is a myth. It's interminable. After her confession, there hadn't been much arguing. They'd simply gone about the business of splitting things apart, only to find that they'd never really merged.
bank accounts were separate clothing in separate closets they'd even kept their cookware separate how was that possible how hadn't he noticed that for twenty years the people he called family had been strangers then again he'd never been the type to notice much months later she broke it off with the new guy she told latner that she hadn't actually loved him
Do you want to get back together, he'd asked. Though he hadn't wanted this, he'd thought it might make life easier. Less kid schlepping, less grocery shopping, less emotional wreckage. No, she told him. I cheated because I wanted to do something so bad there wasn't any coming back. In a way, she was brave. He wished he'd done it first. The casualties here were the kids.
but it was hard to see them as casualties given they didn't like him beatrice was sad slow-moving and heavy-set if latner had thought about it he'd feel very badly that his tendency toward the melancholy had stained the next generation. So he didn't think about it. He ignored it. Dylan was angry like his mother and resentful like her too. His moods blasted through rooms like earthquakes.
Ever since the kid could walk, he'd charged. But over the years, some piece of his courage had left him, and what remained was surliness. He no longer charged. He sat still. eyes watching with furious judgment latner felt awful that they'd turned out so badly he blamed lorna who'd chosen her career over motherhood it was an unnatural choice deviant even. She hadn't always been so selfish. Early on, she'd been devoted, the type who cooked and cleaned and loved and supported. But she got bitter.
Or maybe she just got too much success in her work at Congo. She started picking fights. He'd been forced to play the role of reason, to talk her down, underplay the thing. convince her she was overreacting eventually they avoided one another and then somehow they avoided the children too what surprised him was that after he moved in the silence
He missed Bea and Adilan. Well, maybe not them. They were pills. But he missed the idea of them. Lately, he'd come to wonder, should he have married Lorna at all? He could have stayed with Jerry. a man he'd genuinely loved. Would his kids, born someplace else to a better nurturer than Lorna, have been happier? With his career falling apart and his options contracting, he wondered, too,
whether his stamp on the world was a stamp at all or a castle of sand. It's true that crises precipitate change. In the lonely silence of his new downsized life, he found his college syllabus. Something about the paper, browned and old from a time when his life-held promise, had drawn him near. And so Carson McCullers. He'd been reflecting lately, but not a lot. It was unpleasant. When his John Doe went missing, Latner initiated all the protocols, filed all the correct reports.
Are you saying he got up and walked out? Tucker Rhodes asked. He looked sicker than the day before, his skin sickly green like he needed to vomit. I don't see how he could have. I'm saying he died and got misplaced, probably. Latner answered. But sure, there's a non-zero chance of nanoparticles eating humanity, so maybe he walked out. We're saying he walked out. I rescinded your other reports indicating otherwise.
ladner thought about that knew there was nothing he could do short of searching the morgue for the body which he'd already done okay he said probably he should have been up that night worrying about an infectious fungus about to take over humanity. But he slept. What would Jerry think of all this? He wondered as he inched his finger inside the truss to soothe the skin it was pinching.
If Jerry were watching Latner right now, seeing through Latner's eyes, would he approve? Jerry'd been his secret college boyfriend. They both had jobs at the cafeteria. Both smelled like fried lard. The bravest act of his life, he'd kissed Jerry while walking from work to their separate dorm rooms. He still remembered the feel of Jerry's hands.
his sparse chest hairs and gangly kid body that had flung frisbees with grace. They'd like to read to one another at night. Well, Jerry had done the reading. Lattner had listened. When you meet the love of your life at 19... It's practically unfair. It's too soon, too momentous, impossible. He broke up with Jerry for a woman who checked all the boxes. Pretty, smart, and just a little brittle.
He forgot about Jerry, the way you forget about all your most important things when you're young. And then during the long slog of his marriage, when the friction between their personalities had been like barbed wire, he'd remembered. He searched online, found a wedding photo. Older, shaggier, Jerry'd stood beside his buff, beautiful husband. Jerry was happy, clearly. He'd moved on.
It hit Ladner like an invisible hammer big as Thor's, straight to the bowels. They say love lives in the heart, but they're wrong. It lives in a tangled place below the belly. Further research told the story of their romance. They'd met at the library where they worked. After a few years together, their jobs got automated and they became Congo warehouse employees.
They publicly posted about these career blows. People, presumably friends, responded with great compassion. Lattner had never posted about personal things. He wondered whether he should have. No, he decided. Revealing yourself is lame. At night, when he wasn't trying to read sad books from his old syllabus, he scrolled the online pictures of Jerry and thought, I still love you, Jerry.
Do you love me? He imagined that this thought traveled through the screen, reaching its object on the other side. He imagined Jerry thinking of him right then, wanting him back. These feelings had to be reciprocated, he decided in the magic of dark. Somewhere right now, Jerry was thinking of him too. Then he rubbed one out. And so...
traveling at exactly the speed limit. The human driver in a twilight sleep wrought from boredom. Lattner pondered Jerry, who'd possibly been the love of his life, and was just as possibly the grasping fantasy. of a sad, failed man. If he saw Jerry alone at the reunion, he wanted to say this, I've come lately to realize that life is short. You and me and everyone we know will die.
Maybe it's a party after that, but maybe it's not. Maybe there's nothing. No thoughts, no love, no memory, no identity. Maybe we are erased. It seems to me that this human condition... seeks to hide the big black from its own consciousness. It is so hysterically afraid that it builds trappings and walls and somethings from nothings.
We eagerly occupy ourselves with such distractions because we cannot tolerate death. We scroll and we watch fantasies, and we happily surrender our autonomy to anything that thinks for us. Anything that promises you'll be okay. But in doing so, we sleep little deaths. We are zombies. When my wife left me, I woke up.
I know now that it's better to live with fear. It's better to see it clearly and be brave. I've come to understand that everything we do in this world matters. I've come to understand that I loved you back then. I want to love you again. I'm sorry I spent my life pleasing people who won't remember or care about me after I'm dead, because it was wasted time. I could have been with you. I could have been alive.
It didn't matter what Jerry said after that. It only mattered that he found the courage in himself to say the words. Classified Internal Memorandum, Congo Corp. October 9. 2033. To Micah Peters, Congo CEO. Lorna Ladner, Department of Innovation Legal. Frank Henry, Congo Trust Reserve Applications. From Paul McKenzie R&D. Simon Iscariot, R&D, Lucas Johnson, R&D. To our senior officers, while it's true the beta rollout of Congo 5.0 interface had a fatality,
We believe the individual's burst appendix was unrelated to Congo. Autopsy showed an invasive fungal-like infection. The other 64 test subjects responded positively. We recommend rollout continue. The reception took place at the student union where he'd once watched comedians tell bad jokes before heading back to the library to memorize the citric acid cycle. It was a gorgeous day.
Bright cherry blossom-colored sun bled through the windows and spilled across tables. No one recognized him. He introduced himself as Latner. Everybody called me by my last name. I'm a doctor now. Everybody who had a clique sat together at their own tables. He sat with three other guys and a sad-looking lady with tears in her eyes. They had to scan the menus and give their order to a screen.
Then a waiter wearing a headset came out and brought drinks. At his failure table, they made polite conversation about the cherry blossoms and whether Pakistan was really sinking. This guy across said that the college probably shouldn't have spent $80 million on an Olympic gymnasium, given the dorms were all garbage and the library books had all rotted. And then someone said,
But people don't need paper books. It's all online. The truss and Jerry's absence, where was he? He'd been so stupid to assume, had made Latner cranky and a little mean. Doesn't look like they're using this fancy gym. Look around. These kids are made of dough. Look at us. When's the last time anybody at this table did a push-up? Everybody got quiet after that.
Because you're not supposed to body shame college kids or your table mates. It makes them feel bad. The sad lady got up with her drink, which she thought he'd heard her order as a sexy Frida Kahlo, and joined another table. She was thick in the middle, just like the rest of them, and he wanted to tell her, this isn't an assessment of your human value. I've never cared what other people look like on the outside. I've only ever been interested in their insides.
literally as a surgeon but figuratively too except it sucks having to get to know someone it sucks making all that effort just to find out what's under the skin especially when you might be wasting your time They might be awful, or they might be hurtful, or they might be too, too imperfectly human. I think I say these awful things because I don't like my own outside very much.
I don't like my insight either. It was a useful epiphany that gave him an oddly joyous jolt. Lady, it turns out this is about me, not you. But he couldn't tell her any of this. He'd only hurt her worse. He looked around the table. Four guys with empty seats all between. They'd started cross-talking about Congo 5.0's power outage.
I think something happened. It did something to us, a guy said. He was skinny with buck teeth, his cheeks sunken. What did it do? a guy across asked. He was only half listening. because he was wearing a headset. These people who wore during non-work hours, what was wrong with them? Something, the guy said. My wife and kids don't eat anymore. They don't sleep.
The part of this that Lappner heard wriggled inside him like a worm of worry. Was this connected to his patient? Something was very wrong in the world, and it wasn't just his divorce. Something was happening. A kind of tipping point had been passed, and it felt like falling. It felt like the end of the world, if he let himself feel it. But mostly, he didn't hear it. There's so much noise all around.
It's hard to pay attention, especially when your mind is on your own broken heart. He typed on his interface. There weren't names of the drinks, just pictures. This seemed off-brand given they were at a college. He decided to have a sexy Frida Kahlo out of secret solidarity with a sad lady. Fifteen minutes later, a kid with a headset delivered the drink. How do you like this job? Ladner asked. I used to work in the same cafeteria.
Maybe the kid would talk to him. He and the kid would bond. They'd become like brothers. And over the years, Latner would give him advice, help him thrive. He'd prove he could be a good dad, a good person. This kid would become president, and in his inaugural speech, he'd thank Ladner. Jerry would hear all that and drive to his sad guy apartment. I saw how you raised that kid to be president.
I'd die for you, Jerry would say, eyes wet with pain and love. Don't excite yourself. Save that for later, Latner would answer, wry and suave as James Bond. Where the hell was Jerry? The young waiter's eyes glazed like they belonged on a doll. He didn't hear Latner through his headset. He was carrying a full tray, moving on to the next table. When Latner raised his voice, Hey! he shouted.
Everybody at his table stopped. Everybody at tables around stopped. I'm a mess, he thought. It's the divorce, but it's not the divorce. It's like I've been boiling my whole life and suddenly the lids come off. Everything messy and terrible and wonderful and shameful has spewed out. The waiter stopped too, of course, but his eyes stayed glazed. Sorry, Latner said, low. The kid didn't hear him.
He was tall with a full head of hair and had his life ahead of him. Maybe he was in love. Ladner hoped he was in love. The kid wanted to set down his tray so he could pull his headset down. but there was no place to put it. Ladner considered taking it, knew he'd never balance it right, and the drinks would fall. He didn't take it. Do you like this job? he asked, voice raised.
The kid was confused by the question. His name tag wasn't a name, but a number with a scannable barcode. I have to do this job. It's telling me table three now. Table three. Do you like those headsets? My job wants me to wear them as a prophylactic against lawsuits. The kid had gone to table three. Ladner watched him make the rounds, the headset telling him whom to serve and in what order and exactly how to proceed, step by step.
from one guest to the next. Your brain shuts off when you've got another brain murmuring orders in your ears. The disuse is sandpaper smoothing all your most interesting edges. By then, everybody at his table was ignoring Ladner, so he downed his drink and had two more, sweet as diabetes in a glass. It was then, drunk and disheartened, that he finally found his love.
He was at the appetizer buffet, even though waiters were now serving main courses. Drunk, Latner went for it. As he crossed the room, his heart pounded. This was Jerry, no doubt. older shorter maybe but it was him jerry the man turned at first no recognition even a little fear a drunk was calling his name but then That smile Latner remembered, generous and open. Harlan Latner! Latner stood there, his nerves too alive. Can you die from the anticipation of future joy?
Jerry put his plate down right on top of the cut melons, opened his arms, and hugged him. Latner hugged back. Too long, too tight. Jerry squirmed. The hug felt so good. How are you? I think about you all the time, Jerry said. Just then the buff husband appeared. Latner hated him. They shook hands. Latner pretended not to be heartbroken.
Have you been here this whole time? I didn't see you, Jerry said. Ladner nodded, temporarily losing his ability to speak. Jerry slapped his thigh in a show of frustration. What a shame. I have to be going. I've got a night shift, but let's get together. Yes, Ladner said. Three drinks in, the truth came out. You're the only person I came here to see. The hot, amiable husband narrowed his eyes.
sniffing intentions. Be afraid, Latner thought. Be very afraid. They didn't get the chance to make plans because a bad thing happened. The kid, the waiter, collapsed on the floor. and went into a seizure. You'd think with nearly 80 members of a graduating class at a reasonably good college, you'd have more than one medical professional on sight. But the smart ones had gone into tech. The rest had gone into humanities.
which no longer existed. Latner was on deck. He rushed to the doll-eyed kid, held him down by pinning knees against his shoulders. I need help. Call someone, he cried. And maybe that happened. Jerry's husband turned out also to be capable and strong. He took over holding the kid down as Lattner checked his pulse, heart, and pupils. Just like the John Doe he'd operated on, this guy had no heartbeat.
His whole chest cavity was pulsing. Latner got the defibs and shocked him twice. The pulsing kept going. It reminded him of a squid or octopus, this wet squishing just beneath his skin. But his heart didn't come back. Fast, the local rescue service from the college took over. Ladner tried to tell them what had happened, but they were listening to their headsets and not him. The kid's body stopped pulsing.
It stopped everything. They put him in a gurney and carried him out. Somehow, between finding Jerry and the kid getting carried out, hours had passed. The center had emptied out. Reunion over. Jerry and the husband were gone. Ladner felt a great sadness inside him, not just for his own small disappointments. The kid was young. Maybe he was in love. That was all over now.
He went home that night and scoured the internet for posts about infectious disease and spontaneous seizures in the young. Found nothing. The next morning, Jerry poked him on their friend Webb. Ladner accepted the poke. Got a message. Hey, that was awful. We wanted to stay with you, but we had work. I'm so sorry. Let's get together soon. AI Daily Compendium From Harper's
We always thought the human brain was impossible to replace, but in fact it's the other way around. The human brain is easily replaced. Look at Congo warehouses, where employees stand in strategic formation. throughout aisles of stock, their headsets directing them on the exact paths to retrieve merchandise. Scientists can't replicate bipedal locomotion, a combination of conscious and unconscious decisions.
based on trillions of data points. But they have generated algorithms that complete human tasks as mundane as mail delivery and as complex as heart surgery. All this time we imagined we'd lose our jobs to robots, but the robots don't want our crappy jobs. They want to run the show. At work the following Monday, three John and Jane does.
died in the waiting room, coughing blood. Did we get autopsies? Latner asked. Tucker was holding his belly. He'd gone from pale green to pea green, like his gallbladder had popped. Congo Interface won't allow it, he said. No autopsies until further notice. Money-saving thing. Okay. What if this new crop has the same disease as my John Doe with the mushrooms for intestines?
Tucker shrugged. Was he hungover? Having come to his personal awakening very late in life, Lattner took this cowardice personally. It's a public health concern. Fuck Congo. Talk to your dad. I pinged him, Tucker said. His secretary told me he's indisposed. Is there a point person at the CDC? Latner asked. I pinged them too.
Their mailbox is full. It's a three-day wait. The robot's supposed to call me back. Lattner sat heavy in Tucker's spare chair. This is fucked, he said. Tucker opened his desk drawer, pulled out a headset. The dock headsets came in. He handed it to Ladner. Try it on. They want feedback. Rollout's Friday. It was smooth in his hands, like tooth enamel. And it covered both ears, but didn't add weight.
Hello, a dulcet woman's voice whispered. The earpieces curled inside his canals, warm and pleasant. Please state your employee number. I hate it, Ladner said. The timer went off on Tucker's headset. My break's done, he said, as his eyes glazed over. It took longer than usual to get a car service to take him back home to his apartment.
The driver looked just as green and sick as Tucker had been. At home, Ladner got tired of Hart as a lonely hunter. It made him too sad. People have oceans of emotions inside them. He'd known this intellectually. But lately he was beginning to feel the knowledge in his gut. Even the dullards of the world have hearts and conflicts and private wars no one will ever know. Humanity is everywhere.
He flipped on the streamies and learned that excess deaths today, according to the AP, had quadrupled. Hospitals were filling up, and so were morgues. This wasn't the big news, though. Congo announced that now was a great time for the unemployed and underemployed to visit Congo work centers. For the sake of the economy, it was the civic duty of all to keep the supply line flowing.
They were willing to pay minimum wage and a half. Feeling weird, he called Lorna. You guys okay over there, he asked. Why? Her voice sounded dead. Because I'm curious, he asked, like a question. He was new at asking Lorna personal questions. When they were married, he'd have considered it rude, an invasion of privacy. They already lived on top of one another. Why compound the problem?
I don't know how I feel because nobody ever asks me. I just asked you. Literally, I just asked you how you're doing, he said. You don't count. You're lonely and no one likes you. You're in one of your bitchy moods, he said, then regretted it because it wasn't such a helpful observation. Then they were both quiet until he tried again. Some guy showed up at the hospital last week with his insides all mutated.
I don't mean to alarm you, but it seems like it's something that might be going around. I called to check on you and the kids. There was another long pause. You've heard about the excess hospitalizations, excess deaths. The news is saying it's nothing. But a kid at my college reunion collapsed right in front of me, Lorna. It's not nothing. I've been hearing about it too.
But we're okay, Harlan, she said, a surprising softness entering her voice. Congo put the whole neighborhood on lockdown until this is resolved. We're behind tall gates. Yeah, he said. Not feeling any more reassured. Okay. January 30, 2034, from the Associated Press. Congo CEO Jeff Jassy testified in Congress yesterday over his controversial software update. In his speech, directed at the House Speaker, Cora Lee Sherwood, he said, Ma'am,
I'm very sorry to hear some users think it made them sick or changed their personalities or whatever, but we've done every bit of diligence on this product. Sometimes we think a thing is casual, and it's not. Listen, we updated almost two weeks ago, and excess morbidity and mortality are happening only now. Don't you think it could be radiation or infection? Wouldn't that make a lot more sense?
Lattner came early to the gaming restaurant, so he wouldn't have to make an entrance. The place was called Play It Again, Sam, and all the walls showed retro screenies from the 2020s. He asked for a table someplace quiet and dark. We have an erotic experience room if you want that. A 20% starter special. What's that like? She paused before answering.
The headset was supplying preselected words. It's wonderful, Mr. Lattner. It'll clean your pipes, get your heart racing. Though her cadence was seductive, her affect was flat. I like men, too, he said. And this was the first time he'd ever admitted this. I like men more. The waitress paused again as the system ran his words through an algorithm.
The booth was red vinyl. It was a seedy restaurant, a seedy part of town. On his doctor's salary plus Lorna's Congo money, he'd spent the last two decades in a gated community. We have role-play for every scenario, Dr. Ladner, the waitress said. All kinds of men, the best kinds. Great, I'll think about it, Ladner said. And as she swiveled stiffly, heading for the next client,
He realized that maybe he would. Twenty minutes later, fashionably late, Jerry appeared. He wore a tan Congo uniform, a badge with a barcode. Latner jumped up, hugged him. He didn't smell like lard anymore. He smelled beer sugary and middle-aged. It made Latner laugh. Jerry reached out, grabbed Latner's face in his hands. What?
Am I that bad? Lattner had forgotten this. The way Jerry needed reassurance, the way he'd never been able to supply it. Or maybe he hadn't wanted to. It would have been too committal. No. I love you. I mean, I love it. I love this. It's just, we're not the same. Jerry traced his hands down Latner's face to his shoulders, then his waist. He tried not to be hopeful.
Maybe Jerry was in one of these free-spirit relationships he'd read about. You're definitely the same. I am? I don't think so, Ladner said. Jerry sat down across. You're still blunt. Is that a euphemism for shitty? No, just blunt. I always appreciated it. Until you told me you'd screwed Candace Lyons. But it worked out. You did me a favor. Ladner gulped.
He'd brushed his teeth twice before coming here, soaped behind his ears, and given his balls a somewhat painful loofah. He'd steamed a real cotton shirt, which was buttoned to the top. I'm sorry for that. I was crazy. What you did was a kindness. Wow, did I get strung along after you. You wouldn't believe the crap I cut and ate like a finely aged steak. Ladner remembered then.
The drama of Jerry, the ease with which he'd cried, his saint-like devotion to mind-altering drugs. There'd been problems. He'd forgotten that. Did he even like Jerry? I'm sorry. It's been rough. Jerry told him all about it. The boyfriends who'd turned into psychopaths. The normal boyfriends he'd tormented because he'd been afraid of love. The quest for purpose.
the heartbreaking failure at the library when it closed. He told them about his husband and the fact that they were getting a divorce. I was so happy to have found someone. All my life I'd been looking. But then one day you realize you never saw the person. You just wanted the warm body. Apparently, the husband spent all his time watching streamies. He didn't talk. He didn't want sex.
He didn't show interest in anything except lifting weights. He used to be into me. Now he's like a zombie. It's worse than being alone. Honey, I need the touch. Ladner told him about his time with Lorna. They'd had a nice life. It had been a lie. He told him that he'd been following Jerry for a while now, missing him, though he didn't know if the feeling was real.
He thought about his big speech, distilled it to this. I'm trying to be more human, but I have no idea how that works or what it means. They'd both finished their fake meat sandwiches by then. Jerry got up. moved beside Ladner. The lights were dim. Most of the other customers were on their headsets, watching screenies. No one would care. He reached over, tucked his hand against Jerry's already erect dick.
He opened Jerry's trousers. Jerry did the same. Probably it happened fast. But to him, it was all of time. The expanse of the universe. Ladner's pants were slick wet. He pulled his shirt to conceal it, his white crisp shirt. It felt decadent and insane. He was so happy he was laughing. They both wiped at each other with napkins, and it was such a generous, intimate thing.
Then Jerry looked at his watch. Gotta go. They dock pay if I'm a minute late. He was up, leaving Latner breathless. You do this all the time, don't you? Latner asked, and he couldn't tell if he felt possessive or jealous or just insignificant or none of those things. Alive. In any case, he felt alive. Jerry winked. I've been in a sexless marriage for three years, Harlan. I'd do a gorilla. Will I see you again? If I know you, Harlan, you don't want me to say yes. You want me to play hard to get.
Then he was gone. Ladner realized he'd been stuck with the bill, then remembered that Jerry'd never paid for anything, which was fine. He thought of all the quibbles he'd had against his lover, stacking them like a laundry list. ranking them and naming them and memorizing them and repeating them. And now it seemed like such wasted time. He'd wasted so much of his life.
On his way out, a patron in a Congo warehouse uniform fell out of her chair. Ladner rushed to help her, and as he lifted her, she coughed blood. It trickled down her lip, and it wasn't red, but dull pink. An ambulance appeared ten minutes later, maybe less. He watched the woman get wheeled away. Her heart wasn't beating, but her internal organs throbbed with a slow, methodic... Swish, swish. You have just heard...
Does Harlan Latner Dream of Infected Sheep, Part 1, by Sarah Langan. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki and directed by Alison Bell-Bews. Sarah Langans, a three-time Bram Stoker award-winning novelist and screenwriter, whose novels A Better World, Good Neighbors, The Missing, etc., have made best-of-the-year lists at NPR Newsweek. The Irish Times, AARP, and PW. Her short stories have appeared in Nightmare, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Wired, Year's Best Horror, Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror.
Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, etc. She has an MFA from Columbia University, an MS in Environmental Health Science slash Toxicology from NYU. and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the writer-director J.T. Petty, their two daughters, and two maniac rabbits. Her novella, Pam Kowalski is a Monster, Raw Dog Screaming Press, and her story Squid Teeth, Reactor, are both forthcoming in May, and in 2026, Tor UK is releasing her sixth novel, Trad Wife.
Stefan Rudnicki is a Grammy-winning audiobook producer and an award-winning narrator who has won 17 audio 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-Prosine in 2014 and 2015.
Legends. Long have legends inspired people the world over. For in legends, we see the worlds of the impossible unfold before us. Heroic quests. Horrific monsters. Gods. Magic. Tales of the Valiant and the Villainous. But more than that, in Legend, we see ourselves reflected in the stories we tell. I'm William Stark. And I'm Omar Timsah. And we are D&D Legends and Lore.
Join us as we explore the fantastic lore of the world's most popular tabletop RPG. Suddenly, a beam of radiant light pierces the haze. Then a powerful angel streaks down from above. She is pure beauty, fury, and zeal. Arashni, your sentence has been spoken by the Sildarene. For what you have done, you are declared demon. Be what you are, and go where you must. You can find D&D Legends and Lore on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify or anywhere podcasts can be found.
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.
Enjoy the world and all its terrors? Interested to learn more about unexplained entities and dark legends from across the globe? Join myself and Dr. Sophie Yang as we share horrors, fears, and taboos from her home in Taiwan and discuss the similarities and differences between what scares souls in the East and West. Learn about what haunts the Taiwanese mountains, what comes for you in death, and much more. Check out That Scares Me Too, available now. That's too like boo.
These stories were taken from the pages of Lightspeed Magazine, which is edited by John Joseph Adams. The podcast is produced by Skyboat Media, and the stories and podcast are copyright 2025. Post-production was by Alex Barton at Phase Shift, and our music was composed and performed by Jack Kincaid. I am Stefan Rudnicki. Thank you for listening.