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

Greetings, Clarksville citizens. I want to thank you for spending the time with us by showing up and listening to yet another podcast.

I know your time is precious, but it does offer an escape. It invites you to new worlds, meets new characters, and it's all thanks to you.

So, if you've gone to patreon.com for slash Clarksworld, Clarkswitizens.com,

subscribe to the magazine, checked us a few bucks via a donation.

I just want to thank you and say, we cannot do this without you.

Your contribution, just by being here and listening, telling a friend about the magazine,

allows us to grow, allows us to pay our artists, our nonfiction contributors, our authors, and our staff.

So thank you.

Our story for today is a fourth story from the month of October 2025, issue 229.

It's titled Understudies and is by Greg Egan.

Greg Egan is an Australian science fiction writer.

His latest books are the novel morphotrophic and the collection Sleep in the soul. And if you like what you hear,

you can go back to Dream Factory and you and whose army. So my dear listener, I hope that you can

sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story. One.

It's completely up to you whether you want to go ahead with this.

Vince's father said, looking almost as uncomfortable as Vince in the sound-deaddening, white-carpeted waiting room.

Maybe it would help you with your schoolwork and open up more choices in the long run,

but it's your choice what you do right now. Did I do badly on the test? Vince asked. On his last

visit to Dr. Meadows, he'd try to stay focused as he works through the interminable list of logic

puzzles and word games you'd given him. But they were the kind of thing

where one or two at a time were fun, but after that, it was hard to keep his mind from wandering.

...