Hello and welcome back to another edition of Tales from the Pit. I'm your stalwart Pittsman, Mr Michael Swaim. Thanks for joining us.

You know, I kind of could have had this conversation with anybody. I think it's one of the more universal topics we'll hit upon.

I always rewarding to talk to someone with a very unique and specific life experience

but I thought in this case we'd talk about something we all share that we're going to die someday.

So I chose to speak with my good friend Adam Ganser for reasons I think will become apparent as

the conversation on spools, but as usual I have a little short story to read for you up top and

then we'll get into the interview itself. This is called There will Come Soft Brains.

Dawn broke pink and pale yellow over the crest the day Charlie went to work for the last time.

Whispy clouds moved low across the sky like pencil-thin mustaches, inchworms, incisions.

He decided to walk.

His feet knew the root by muscle memory.

It was the next best thing to taking the bus, thought Charlie.

He could sit back, relax, and take in the sights.

The first rays of real sunlight picked out bits of glass and pottery amongst the rubble

and made them sparkle.

A big black column of smoke that had developed over the last few days greeted him cheerily.

The smell of animal matter quietly rotting hung in the air, but it was not as thick as it had once been,

not enough to sway Charlie's feet from their course.

Tumbledown tenements, finally fulfilling the destiny embedded in their descriptor, lay scattered in Charlie's way like post-Tantrum LEGO bricks.

His feet took him patiently around them, making coarse corrections whenever he found himself

bumping up against a feld power line or shattered brickwork. It was trial and error.

He passed a few folks as his feet meandered up and over a gentle hill. A man he didn't recognize

...