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

Welcome to the third story for the month of November 2025, Issue 230. I hope this podcast,

along with all of our podcasts, find you as well as can be, all things considered. I want to thank you

for taking the time to spend with us today to listen to yet

another story. And you know how we do these stories and we do the nonfiction and we are able to bring

you the art and this podcast? It's by your support. So if you've gone to patreon.com board slash

Clark's World, if you've gone and bought a subscription,

or checked a few bucks our way via a donation.

You are what helps bring all of our worlds and all of our characters and all of these stories live.

So thank you.

We have a long one for you for the third story, and it is titled The Apologists, and is by Todd Day Thompson. Todd Day Thompson is best known for his books Rosewater and The Murders of Molly Southbourne. His background is in medicine, psychiatry, and social anthropology. He lives in works in the United Kingdom. He is a winner of the Arthur C. Clark Award for Best Novel and a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best series.

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

One. The Murder

Chapter 1

A dual carriage road descends from a flyover bridge in Thamesmead, bearing sluggish traffic

on both sides.

From inside bus number 229, a woman looks out of the large windows and thinks the other vehicles look like toy cars.

For all she knows, the 229 itself looks like a wind-up toy to the rest of the traffic.

The sky above is the uniform gray canopy, cloudless, and at no risk of being considered a harpinger of good

weather. A little girl sings. Each little flower that opens, each little bird that sings.

On one side of the road, the brutalist architecture of a sprawling housing estate appears,

with its endless concrete walkways, connecting the forbidding buildings. The ground floors are

...