You are listening to a Clark's World Magazine podcast. I'm your host and narrator Kate Baker. I hope that this

podcast is finding you well, my dear listeners. We're now on to the fifth story for the month of April

2024, issue 211. I want to thank you for taking the time

to spend with us for subscribing to the magazine for coming back to each and every podcast or maybe even going to

Patreon.com forward slash Clark's world. Your support means the world to us and we

simply cannot do this without you. Our title for the story is The Rambler and is by Shen Dasheng, translated by Kara Healy.

Shen Dasheng is a colonist and fiction writer.

She lives in Shanghai, China, and works as an editor.

Her short story collections include the ones in remembrance, asteroids in the afternoonnoon and Wanderers.

Karahili is the Byron K Trippet assistant professor of Chinese and Asian studies at Wabash College.

Her research situates contemporary Chinese science fiction in relation to both

Chinese literary traditions and global science fiction. Her articles have been published in journals such as

modern Chinese literature and Culture,

science fiction studies, and Wanshu.

She is also an active literary translator with work appearing in Pathlight, The way spring arrives in other stories, and the reincarnated giant,

an anthology of 21st century Chinese science fiction.

So my dear listener, I hope you can sit back relax and let me tell you a story. One day a part of the city moved that shouldn't have. Mistaking it for an earthquake,

the half dozen people there wobbled to brace themselves with flailing arms. The shaking went on for a few seconds.

Gradually they tucked their arms back in place and looked around. Near and far,

skyscrapers arranged neatly against the blue sky, cast thick, uniform shadows in the bright sunlight, below two roads met at a perpendicular intersection, and traffic rolled along a few pedestrians on either side.

There's no sign of alarm.

Only the handful of people crossing the overhead pedestrian bridge noticed anything unusual.

...