You are listening to a Clarkshold magazine podcast with your host and narrator Kate Baker. Welcome to the first podcast for May, 2025, issue 224. Thank you again for your ongoing support of the magazine. It's listeners like you, who allow us to bring you stories like Brainem Disco 2191 by Angela Lou.

Your support means we can do this each and every month, so whether you are a subscriber,

a patreon.com for slash Clarksworld supporter, or you've told a friend about all the stories

that you like.

Thank you. We simply cannot like. Thank you.

We simply cannot do this without you.

Angela Liu is a speculative fiction writer slash poet based in New York City and Tokyo,

with over 30 short stories and 20 poems published or forthcoming across a range of speculative and literary magazines.

Angela is also a two-time Nebula Award finalist, a 2003 Ignite Award finalist, and a 2024

Reesling Award recipient. Since Angela's first pro publication in 2023,

Angela's work has also been nominated for the push cart, best of the net,

Best of Small Fictions, longlisted for the BSFA Awards,

featured on Reactor.com, and included in Locus Annual Recommended Reading List.

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

We're in a club inside my head.

The mirror floor is sky blue and a disco ball spins above us like a giant eye. Here we have access to every song

in the solar system, all 3,000 channels of musical output for the past 500 years. Here, music

pounds out the planet's heartbeat. Is this your first visit, you ask? Your voice isn't quite right, like it's coming through the janky speaker in that retro-luner diner we always liked.

But in truth, I don't know anymore.

Voices are one of the first things a brain forgets.

The disco ball rotates, beaming its silver light onto the walls in our avatars, dewy skin. The post-mortem

pamphlets promised it would look like we're dancing under Jupiter's never-ending auroras,

...