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

Greetings, Clark's World Citizens. I hope this podcast finds you well. Welcome to our first story

for the month of June. Now I know that this is late, and I apologize. I've had a lot going on.

Thank you for consistently being a part of Clark's World magazine.

For checking up on me, everything's okay, and thank you for supporting this magazine.

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Now I first started for the month of June 2023. Issue 201 is called The Efficient.

And it's by Domaniqa Fet Place. Domaniqa Fet Place is a writer and math tutor. Her work has appeared

in azimovs, analog, fnsf, uncanny, fantasy, light speed, nightmare, tour.com, and numerous

years' best anthologies. Her honors include two push-cart prizes and support from Ten House,

McDowell, and Jarasi. If you'd like what you hear, you can go back to the two other stories that

Domaniqa has here at Clark's World, which are, we'll always have two versions of terrors,

and no Vera there. So my dear listener, I hope you can sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story.

Open, holotext. I came to tell to perform a wedding. The strangers met at our ship at the dock,

wearing hooded robes that obscured their appearance. The only clue to what they might look like

occurred in the form of a single pair of four limbs, which were sleeved in pale. Three fingered

hands protruded from those sleeves. There were three of them, and they bow deeply when they met me.

They spoke their greetings in highly formal English my native language. I gave my greeting in

Raxian. The predominant language of the planet where I resided, and then asked the hooded figure

...