The label shifts into view rattles unsettlingly, something skitters inside, the label shifts into view, warning, adult content. Pseudepod episode 614 September 28th 2018.

Our story this week is figure 8 by E. Catherine Tobler. This originally appeared in the February 2017 issue of Gamut and when we asked Catherine what inspired it, we were told a friend and I were talking, and he idly

wondered where all the other Ripley had gone. And that got me thinking about Ripley from

Alien Resurrection, and well well here we are.

Catherine is an excellent author you can find more details about her work on her

Sudapod page and Jen is a phenomenal narrator as well and again is a frequent flyer here you can find more details about her on the site.

So get ready.

Check your corners, check your exits, because this is a true story.

Figure 8 by E. Catherine Tobler, narrated by Jen Zinc.

There were seven before you, your number eight, perfect in every way because they rooted out each

imperfection across the seven who came before, but they left you, your makers.

They left you without a hint as to where they'd gone.

You were old enough, smart enough, built well enough to withstand anything that might come.

So they left you and you you hunt if your perfection the

others cannot stand you find the first in the lab where your makers left you.

She hangs suspended in a floor to ceiling tank, pale like she's never seen sunlight.

Of course, she never has. Her skin is milk, shot through

with veins so blue, they don't look like rivers but rather cords of rope. She sleeps floating in the amniotic fluid that's as clear as water.

You thought it would have gone gray, but you don't know how to mark the passage of time,

and it's hard to say how much time has passed. She was the first, and you were the last and are grown, so it seems

like a good deal of time would have come and gone. But you've not spent much time under the sun yet either.

You drain the tank and she floats to the bottom like a jellyfish, curled in on herself,

...