You are listening to a Clarks World magazine podcast. I'm your host and narrator,

Kate Baker, greetings Clarks World Citizens. Welcome to the fifth story.

For January 2023, issue 196. Have you been enjoying the stories as far? You can reach out to

Neil at Twitter. He is at the Clarks World. If you so should choose, drop him a line. Let him know

what you like about the magazine. As always, if you'd like to throw a few dollars our way,

please visit patreon.com forward slash Clarks World. Our story today is titled

Sharp Undeuing and is by Natasha King. Natasha King is a Vietnamese American writer and nature

enthusiast. Her poetry has appeared in okay donkey, strange horizons, best of the net and elsewhere.

In her spare time, she enjoys thinking about the ocean. So my dear listener, I hope you can sit

back, relax, and let me tell you a story. Sure enough, we could not outrun the hoverbikes.

Understandable? Yes. We were a new thing, a sharp thing, not a fast thing. So we stood and

panted and the bikes idled a few hands breaths above the rain slick tarmac. The Nero's men

fanned out before us. We said boys and also let's not do anything hasty and also always be

closing. No reaction from these little vessels of intent, their faces obscured in the shadow thrown

by the weed choked overpass where they had cut us off. We'd made it, oh, perhaps two miles,

sprinting south, pursued, a body wants to go north, sometimes circumstances intervene.

If one of them tried to slot us, we could take the upper hand, but they carried weapons,

not slot apparatus. Read the room, the network executive used to say, we could try to fight,

frail as this body was, we had previously been several murderers. Yes? Yes. Other learned

violence is still there and the root reflex and the synapse array of us. The kid even well

into his teens used to cry when someone stepped on a beetle, but we were so much more now.

Over the sound of the rain, though, we heard one of the men snap, bring her alive.

...