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

Greetings Clark's World Citizens.

Welcome to our second piece of fiction for the month of August 2010.

The only piece of news that I have to share with you is that if you know anyone who is into e-books,

Neil Clark has opened up the Clark's World slash Worm Publishing e-bookstore.

From there you can find back issues of Clark's World magazine in e- Pub and

mow-be formats. And as with podcast, you can now bring your Clark's World Fiction wherever you may go

should you have an e-book reader. Now on to our second piece of fiction for

issue number 47, Messenger by Julia Siderova.

For those of you who don't know Julia, she has a PhD in molecular genetics and she spends her days as a

biomedical scientist at the University of Washington, Seattle,

messing with cultured human cells for the most part.

The rest of the time she writes speculative fiction.

She likes feeding hummingbirds, doing things the hard way and making pronouncements on

human nature, history, politics, finance, and other topics outside of her area of expertise.

Now without further ado, let me tell you a story.

Messenger by Julia M. Ciderova for Clarks World magazine, Issue No. 47, August, 2010.

Life is a stick with death on each end, balanced on a finger of the universe. I understand that much. My kind is born small and

numerous, wet, and weak. Most of us do not survive to the onset of maturation.

Of those who do, yet fewer complete it.

Sometimes a human will step on a whole brute of my kind and never notice.

Other times, one of us, a mature one,

...