You are 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 last story for the month of September, issue 180. I hope you've enjoyed these stories

thus far. And thank you for your ongoing support of the magazine, whether it's just listening,

telling a friend, or going to patreon.com forward slash Clark's world to send a couple dollars

you too could be a part of what we do here at Clark's World by becoming a citizen. Every little

dollar helps. So our last story is titled excerpts from the text of an explanatory steal erected for

our edification by the scholars of the outer Orion Tendril, and is by Timmons Isias.

Now Timmons Isias, who can be found at his website, timmonsisias.com, is a satirist,

writer and poet living in Pittsburgh. His works ranging from literary to genre have been

published in 22 languages. He has also been a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award

and won the Asimovs Readers Award. His story Norbert and the system has appeared in a textbook

and in college curricula. He was shortlisted for the 2019 Gregory O'Donohue International Poetry

Prize. His full length Lewis Award winning collection of poetry, why elephants no longer communicate

in Greek was brought out by concrete wolf. So my dear listener, I hope you can sit back,

relax and let me tell you a story.

This is what happened and how it happened and why this mess is as it is.

Draw what lessons you may. The purple tide first emerged in Eastern Pennsylvania,

oozing out of the landfill middens of New York cities and Philadelphia's trash and moved

with a sense of purpose, clearly looking for trouble. It's stank of anger, decay,

fermentation used condoms and deep thought. Its surface seeds a leprous white,

great crest of fungal growth forming and tearing under the pressure of the moving tide.

...