Hello and welcome to the Drabblecast, episode 439. The Drabble Cast is a weekly

audio fiction magazine that brings strange stories by strange authors to strange listeners such as yourself.

I'm your host, Norm Sherman.

Sorry for the little break in episodes there folks,

just getting all our ducks in a row for all our stories lined up this year for you.

Ducks are way harder to choreograph than you'd think.

Hey get back to that slush pile duck. You had your bathroom break.

On this week's show, Weapons of Mass deliberation?

But first, a hundred word story.

Travels are stories exactly 100 words, no more, no less.

And ours this week comes from Peter Philio, and it's called The Heat of a Mother's Fire.

Peter's a website developer and cryptography and blockchain programmer by trade.

He alternates living in Florida and Wisconsin, depending on the season,

with his wife, Aaron, and two cats.

Once again, my mother is late to her own son's birth.

It's my 317th birthday today if I'm counting correctly. I've already been pulled from the vats before I hear the whiskering skitter of my mother's bone-dry tentacles levering her into the

birthing chamber. The specialists hook sensors into my soft, moist flesh, their

heads bowed. With an unblinking eye, my mother watches the screens and

readouts. They measure my strength, my worth, my suitability to inherit her

empire.

She pauses, considering,

my ventricles flare.

...