You are listening to a Clarks World Magazine podcast. I'm your host and narrator Kate Baker.

I hope this podcast finds you extraordinarily well.

This is our fourth story for the month of October 2019 issue 157

Thank you so much if you support the magazine just by reading listening word, word of mouth,

or for those of you who support it financially

by going to Patreon.com forward slash Clark's world.

Each and every dollar helps every single month.

Our story is titled National Center for the Preservation

of Human Dignity and is by U-Hannam translated by Elisa, and Justin Howe.

Yu Hanam is a writer of diverse genres including SF, horror, romance, and children's literature.

In 2018, she won an award in the fifth genre fiction short stories and science contest with

her story, The Woman of the Future.

That same year she won the fifth Han Nukwan science fiction award with blue hair,

a story about the friendship between an alien boy and a girl from Earth.

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

At four in the morning, the doorbell rang. Outside stood two young men dressed in gray uniforms uncreased. They appeared almost to be identical to each other, save that the one with the narrower chin was wearing glasses.

Taking up my worn-out bag, I followed them down the stairs and outside.

The night's rain had washed away the last lingering traces of the autumn,

leaving the steel staircase outside the building, slick,

clasping the cold handrails and taking each step with great caution,

though the ridiculousness of it nearly made me laugh, here I was, struggling with all my might

to survive even now.

...