You are listening to a Clarks World magazine podcast with your host Kate Baker.

Greetings Clarksville citizens. I want to thank you right off the bat for your

patience. Right as I was about to release the second podcast of the month for May, I

came down with Strep Throat. I couldn't swallow, I couldn't talk I couldn't talk and this is aside from some congestion the best my

voice has been in about I don't know seven days or so so thank you for the

patience the well wishes I really appreciate all the support you've thrown my way.

And that's what this community is. It's support and love, and it's awesome.

Thank you so much for being a listener. So onward with the second story.

The piece is titled A Gift in Time

and is by Maggie Clark.

Now Maggie Clark is a doctoral student at Wilfrid Loyer University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada,

where she studies 19th century science writing.

Her science fiction has been published in analog, Clark's World, Light Speed, and Daily Science

Fiction with more work forthcoming at Gigonotosaurus. Her website can be found at re-space, that's R-E-S-P-A-C-E dot Wordpress.com.

So without further ado, sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story.

Though July 9, 1937 was a warm Friday

and all the warmer for events in its early morning, Mouse shivered as he stood before the roaring 2 a.m. Blaze in Little Ferry, New Jersey, and considered, not for the first time, that there was no time machine, not really, just the desperate

will of his quickly beating heart which could secure for him all things it seemed, but that which he most desired.

To the two little fairy firefighting companies had been added all six from Ridgefield Park

and two other firemen besides, who had broken from their own teams to help defend, if not the Fox film plant.

For its vaults were now clearly beyond repair, at least the neighboring residences from whence had just poured trembling agitated families whose members would all be dead or nearly so by the year to which Mouse now intended to return.

He might have stopped the blaze entirely he knew, might have spared these people their long

...