these aren't the stories your mother told you no these are the other stories

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Today's episode is Tenticleacle written by john trennan and narrated by alexandra elroy and so the job fell to me to start the machine

that would end the world.

I didn't much care for that word, machine.

It felt like such a crude way to describe the miles of sophisticated cabling, circuitry, and micro-processes that we built at this facility, the largest and most complex

system ever assembled by humankind. I swooned not for the first time at the thought of what

we'd achieved here. Right now, beneath my feet, a 30-kilometer ring of super-cooled piping stretched away from me in concrete-lined

underground tunnels. Soon, in about two minutes' time, as a matter of fact, the machine would be powered up for the first time in history.

An artificial black hole would be born, and its incredible power would be harnessed to generate

limitless free energy for the entire continent.

Is it so surprising that I swooned at the prospect?

No, didn't think so.

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