You are listening to a Clarksworld magazine podcast. This is the third story of the month of April

2025, issue 223. I want to thank you for your ongoing support of this magazine, whether it's

via subscription or patreon.com forward slash Clarksworld. You can also look at the Clarksworld magazine website

to see the other ways that you can support us.

Financially, we also appreciate word of mouth.

We also appreciate the emails that you're sending us.

You can always reach at Kate at Clarkshouldmagine.com, and that is Clark with an E.

Our third story is titled, Egiopolis Testudo, and is by Gordon Lee.

Gordon Lee is a writer of speculative fiction.

He lives in Sydney, Australia, and enjoys reading fiction of all genres,

listening to music, running, and sleeping.

His favorite short fiction authors include Margaret Atwood,

Paolo Bacagalupi, Octavia Butler, and Stephen King.

So, my dear listener, I hope you can sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story.

After five months on Imir, the pond water musk of the Leviathan turtle has become almost indistinguishable from my own.

It escapes detection except for brief moments after showers are waking, cloying at my throat.

Or like now, at the bottom of a deep breath, its spice rousing me.

It's become a restless habit of my graveyard shifts.

The sensor operations dome lulls me at this hour, seated alone behind the single island desk.

The early morning drifts around the curved walls and through a hundred virtual dome screens.

Rows of them rotate down, disappearing into the carpet, and others rise.

Half dimmed, except for the central central displays they display telemetry aggregating from a starscape of probes and sensors implanted across emir's shell and body streams heat maps route maps patrol logs maintenance progress and myriad other charts, graphs, and visualizations.

...