You are listening to a Clarksville magazine podcast. I'm your host, narrator, Kate Baker.

Welcome to our fourth story for the month of May 2023 issue 200. Thanks again for coming by the

magazine. I hope you're enjoying all the stories we've provided this far. We've got a bunch more

stories left for the month of May. Whether this is your first time joining us or over 800 at this

point, thank you. Thank you for coming by. Thank you for supporting the magazine. Thank you for

being a subscriber. And thank you for telling your friends. And if you can do so, please, please

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Our story is titled Lull, said the scorpion, by Rich Larson. Rich Larson was born in

a golminizer, has lived in Spain and the Czech Republic, and is currently based in Grand

Prairie, Canada. His fiction has been translated into over a dozen languages among them Polish,

French, Romanian, and Japanese, and his Clarksworld story Ice was adopted into Emmy-winning

episode of Love, Death, and Robots. He's got tons of stories here at Clarksworld, so I encourage

you to go back and listen. So my dear listener, hope we can sit back, relax. Let me tell you a story.

Does it come in any other colors? Maeve asks, eyeing herself in the smart glass.

No, the salesperson admits, you look quite elegant and eggshell, though. She's undecided,

the holiday suit is a cooperative swarm of microorganisms, a pale,

paramecium shroud that coats her entire body wetly, glistening. Full spectrum UV protection,

internal temperature regulation, virus filtration, water desalination, emergency starch,

synthesis. The salesperson has a comfort sort of murmur, ideal for any sort of live tourism.

Where will you be off to? Faro, Maeve says, and saying the name conjures emaculate white

buildings and deep blue waters onto the smart glass behind her, displaying the paradise she's

...