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

Welcome to the fourth story for the month of August 2025, issue 227. I do hope this podcast

finds you as well as can be all things considered. Thank you for spending your time with us

for a little escapism. And thank you for helping to bring these stories to you. If you visited patreon.com

forward slash clark's world or clark's world citizens.com, you have been an integral part of each month's issues. So thank you very much for your ongoing support.

Our story is titled, Memories are only valuable if They Can Be Lost, and is by Ai Zheng.

Ai Zheng is a Chinese Canadian writer, Ignite, Bram Stoker, Nebula Award winner, and Hugo

Astounding Locus Aurora and BSFA Award finalist from Chang Le, Fujian, currently residing in Toronto, Ontario.

Her work can be found in FNSF, the Dark and the Masters Review, among others.

She is a recipient of Odyssey Workshop's 2022 Fresh Voices Scholarship and the author of A Place

Near the Wind, Lingyu, and I Am I.

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

The Floating City

Hovering around the corner of every alley you'd slinked along the shadows of

was a holographic infinite snake,

the upcoming New Year's zodiac symbol. It was also something you saw every day for the past month

through the small window of the factory you worked in, or not so much a factory, but a mine,

really. Sometimes you suspected that every time you thought about something outside of work,

they'd wipe a bit of your memory during your hours.

Small snippets only, just enough that you wouldn't notice or miss the missing memories.

You waved the hologram aside and headed toward the city's only travel agency,

which looked more like a safe within a bank

...