You are listening to a Clarksworld magazine podcast. I'm your host and narrator, Kate Baker. I hope this podcast finds you well, as well as possible. I want to thank you for being here for taking the time out of your busy schedule to escape with us. And I want to thank you for your ongoing support in doing so. And if you can, please try to visit

patreon.com forward slash Clarksworld or Clarkswitizens.com or perhaps buy a subscription. We simply

cannot do this issue or any of our past or future issues without you. And I want to thank you

if you've been a longtime supporter of the magazine, or maybe you're

just here for the first time.

Our last story for August is titled VUMM.

It is by Uchechuku Nuwaka.

Uchechuku Nwaka is an Igbo medical student at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

His works have appeared in Podcastle,

Escape Pod, Fusion Fragment, Faya, Amanana, and brittle paper, among others. He's won the Locust Award for Best Novelette, the Rainbow Bank, Giganotosaurus, in 2024. His work has also been a finalist for the Utopia Award and long-listed

for a BSFA award. When he's not writing short fiction or working on his new novella, he can be found

reading manga, streaming TV shows, playing amateur volleyball, or trying to catch up with his

endless schoolwork. So, my dear listener, sit back, relax, and let me tell

you a story. The suit is too tight, pinches just a little too uncomfortably around your neck,

like phantom gnarly fingers constricting your windpipe. You swallow a lump. It's only nerves. A bead of sweat

zigzags down the side of your face distracting you from all the readings in your helmet's

HUD. Your recently modified vertebral implants feel like a caterpillar crawling down your back,

skittering, biting, chewing.

You've not needed the augments since the Amadioha were decommissioned.

You think that you should have removed them.

That's what they suggest of the rehabilitation home for the ex-pilots anyway.

You only attend to humor, pa, a boopi.

...