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

Greetings, Clarkswold citizens. I hope this podcast finds you well as always.

Thank you for your ongoing support of the magazine. So for those of you who have been subscribing,

telling a friend, donating over at patreon.com for a slash Clarksworld. Thank you so much.

Our story is titled Zeta Epsilon and is by Isabel J. Kim. Isabel J. Kim, who can be found

at the website, Isabel.Kim is a Korean American speculative fiction writer based in New York City.

She is a Shirley Jackson award winner and her short fiction has been published in Clarksworld

light speed and strange horizons, among other venues. When she's not writing, she's either

practicing law or co-hosting her internet culture podcast. Wow, if true. Both equally noble

pursuits. And if you like what you hear, you can go back to a bunch of other stories as well

as done for Clarksworld. Some of them titled calf cleaving and the benthic black.

Termination stories for the cyberpunk dystopia protagonist. The massage lady at Myeongshung Road

bathhouse. Homecoming is just another word for the sublimation of the self.

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

Start at the cleave of it. Not at Zed's Meet Death or Epps centuries-long destruction,

but at the moment that Zed halves his own mind and walks away, or as was reported in the

internal memorandum, the moment when Pilot Commander Zeta San Tano killed himself at his

infinite post on the MKS Epsilon, leaving behind an empty airlock and a crippled starship

unable to communicate, limping its way home after battle, carrying a full complement of soldiers.

When the ship returned to base, the staff at a Malcolm Research tried to parse whether the MKS

Epsilon was aware of Commander Zeta's upcoming suicide. The MKS Epsilon was functionally

equivalent to Zeta San Tano, to speak of one was to speak of the other, but without Zed,

...