If you've been following along on the podcast, you've finished listening to a memory called

Empire by Arkady Martin, and we wouldn't be surprised if you're still thinking about it.

If you want more of the story, the next audiobook in the series is A Desolation Called Peace.

Picking up where the last audiobook left off, we find an alien armada lurking on the

edges of Texacolani's space. No one can communicate with it or destroy it until a diplomatic

delegation, including Mahit Dismar and the three seagrass, is sent out to try to make peace.

In this bonus episode, you'll hear the first chapter. Enjoy.

Prelude. To think. Not language. To not think language. To think. We. And not have a tongue

sound or cry for its crystalline depths. To have discarded tongue sounds where they are

unsuitable. To think as a person. And not as a wantful voice. Not as a blank-eyed

hungering beast. Not as a child thinks. With only its own self and the cries of its mouth

for company. To look outward. From the two ring or three ring of one of our star flyers.

And see every pinpoint light. Every fusion heart star. To see the pattern these stars

make in our eyes. Reflecting the pattern of our eyes and the dark on the old planet.

How our eye shine glowed in the dirt home. The blood home. How we closed them. And were

invisible dark scavengers, secret hunters. How our star flyers glow in the void home.

The light home of us. How we slip sideways. Like a closing eye. And are invisible. To think

as a person. With the singing fractal swarm of we. And see these places that we have

not yet scavenged. Not yet torn open. Claws as delicate as surgeon scalpels. For their secrets.

Oh the other hunger. The hunger of we. That is nothing to do with the body. The hunger of we.

To reach out. This body or that body. Flesh full of the genes for strength and savagery.

Flesh full of the genes for patience and pattern spotting. This body. A curious body. An

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