You're listening to a Clark's World magazine podcast with your host and narrator, Kate Baker.

Greetings, Clark's World Citizens. I hope this podcast finds you extraordinarily well.

This is our third story for the month of July 2022. Issue 190. How are you doing? How's

July treating you? Thank you for coming about and listening to yet another podcast. Or maybe

this is your first. If this is your first podcast, welcome in.

If you like what you hear, please stay and listen to another. We have an entire back catalog

up on the website that's Clark's World magazine.com and that is Clark with an e. If you'd

like to go back, or I think you can find us via various RSS feeds like Apple, Stitcher,

think even Spotify. So thank you for your ongoing support. And if you choose to do so, please

visit patreon.com forward slash Clark's World. If you already are a patron of the magazine,

thank you. You allow us to get this done every single month. So our third story is titled

Carapace. It is by David Goodman. David Goodman, who can be found at the website DavidGoodman.net,

is a short story writer and novelist based in East Lothian, Scotland. He is a member of the Edinburgh

SFF writing group and codex writers. And if you'd like what you hear, please consider going

back to Meg Visitor, which was featured in our December 2021 issue. So my dear listener,

I hope you can sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story.

The first thing I am aware of is the lack of a heartbeat. Then the volume of human blood that

coats my interior surfaces precisely 0.019 milliseconds after activation of conscious response

and autonomous threat analysis. I become an eye. Three milliseconds later, I began this automated

logging process in order to provide a coherent after-action report. My first entry records that I

am screaming. This is technically incorrect. I make no sound because my external speakers have been

sheared off by some kind of blast. If I had a mouth, I would be screaming.

...