Podcasts about nth dimension

The hits keep on coming as we venture further into January 1994. But first, we gotta talk a little bit about British Candy. On this week's episode of SNEScapdes, we're talking about quirky British platformer Zool: Ninja of the Nth Dimension. It's about a ninja, it had Chupa Chup branding in the UK, that's pretty much all you need to know. We're also talking about Lester the Unlikely. This is a game with a bit of a reputation. Will Chase and Emmy find this one to be as bad as that reputation would suggest or is there anything redeeming about it? And finally, we're talking about Skyblazer. This is a game that was not on Chase's or Emmy's radars before, but they both really loved it. Did you know about this one from back in the day? All of this and a deep(ish) dive on Gremlin Graphics on today's SNEScapades.

Shane, Wolf, Levi and UB talk about their favorite stand up's and some of their favorite jokes form those specials. Become a supporter at Patreon.com/westbind. Follow us at Instagram.com/westbindshow. Catch our live streams on Wednesdays at 9pm Facebook.com/westbindshow.

George Delafontos from Surrey gets ugly with Chuck Rock, Paul Turner returns to defend his punching crown on Sonic Blast Man, and Mavis John Minor takes on her son Matthew on the yet-to-be-released Zool!It's platforming week in the Review Zone, as Dragon's Lair and Hook for the SNES, and The NewZealand Story for the Master System get looked at, GamesMaster helps struggling gamers on Faxanadu, Monkey Island 2, and Fighting Masters, and Funk Master T remixes Super Mario Land in this week's feature.Plus, we're joined by the excellent and hilarious Dave Bulmer from the equally excellent and hilarious Sonic The Comic The Podcast! Dave talks about his gaming history, his love all things 90s, and his admiration of Zool. You can follow Dave on Twitter, and STCTP here.Get this show a week early and ad free by supporting on Patreon!Theme song by Other ChrisBed music by TeknoAXE's Royalty Free Music8-bit cover of "Ebeneezer Goode" by The Shamen created by Andy DawsonFollow Luke on TwitterFollow Ash on TwitterFollow Under Consoletation on TwitterFollow Under Consoletation on InstagramSend your thoughts to feedback@underconsoletation.comunderconsoletation.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I bang on a lot about the Commodore 64 a lot on Longplay and other shows I do, but I thought it was about time to give the Commodore's Amiga line of computers some love too. So on this episode of Longplay, we're playing the soundtrack to the "Ninja of the Nth Dimension" as we play the entire soundtrack to the original Zool and Zool 2. Tracklisting: Zool - Acid Trak Zool - Rock 'n Zool Zool - Sonic Basher Zool - Sweetie Land Funk Zool - Zoolaphobia Zool - Zool Rave Zool - Zool 1.4 (Unused) Zool - Zool 1.6 Sunset Mix (Unused) Zool 2 - Ecran Titre Zool 2 - Loader Zool 2 - Bulb Zool 2 - Egyptian Zool 2 - Ices Zool 2 - Snake Zool 2 - Swan

I bang on a lot about the Commodore 64 a lot on Longplay and other shows I do, but I thought it was about time to give the Commodore's Amiga line of computers some love too. So on this episode of Longplay, we're playing the soundtrack to the "Ninja of the Nth Dimension" as we play the entire soundtrack to the original Zool and Zool 2. Chapters: (00:00:00) - Welcome to Longplay (00:00:44) - Zool (Amiga version) - Acid Trak (00:01:22) - Zool (Amiga version) - Rock 'n Zool (00:05:57) - This is Longplay (00:10:20) - Zool (Amiga version) - Sonic Basher (00:14:26) - Zool (Amiga version) - Sweetie Land Funk (00:18:29) - Zool (Amiga version) - Zoolaphobia (00:22:36) - This is Longplay (00:23:15) - Zool (Amiga version) - Zool Rave (00:27:29) - Zool (Amiga version) - Zool 1.4 (Unused) (00:28:31) - Zool (Amiga version) - Zool 1.6 Sunset Mix (Unused) (00:34:10) - This is Longplay (00:35:17) - Zool 2 (Amiga version) - Ecran Titre (00:41:51) - Zool 2 (Amiga version) - Loader (00:43:13) - This is Longplay (00:44:08) - Zool 2 (Amiga version) - Bulb (00:49:58) - Zool 2 (Amiga version) - Egyptian (00:53:03) - This is Longplay (00:53:34) - Zool 2 (Amiga version) - Ices (01:00:11) - Zool 2 (Amiga version) - Snake (01:06:34) - This is Longplay (01:12:54) - Zool 2 (Amiga version) - Swan

MARV LIVE at the i.ny 2019 Block Party at Mickey Martins aka Block Party in the Nth Dimension - Oct 20 2019 Description courtesy of i.ny: The Block Party is a classic, low-down, heartfelt, neighbourhood New York tradition. Shut both ends of the block, rack up barbeques, ice drinks, unfold furniture, wear little, set the decks and turn it up. It’s where the members of a single community congregate, to observe an event of importance, or simply for mutual enjoyment. The name comes from the closing of a city block to traffic, so the people of that block can gather, can dance, can eat and drink together, be together. It’s a celebration. It’s a form of activism, and an artistic effort, reclaiming the street as a public space, a shared and joyous space. The I.NY Block Party will take a gentler form – less racous-ness, more Sunday afternoon ease – when Qool Marv sets up in Mickey Martin’s brick lane to run through his 40-year collection of New York soul, funk, hip-hop & breaks, each record dropped in the spirit of the Block Party, the spirit of the community. https://thisisiny.com/whats-on/i-ny-block-party/ + https://thisisiny.com/ + https://djqoolmarvsounds.podomatic.com/ + https://www.mixcloud.com/qooldjmarv/ + https://www.instagram.com/qooldjmarv/ https://www.mickeymartins.ie/ Photo: Shane @ https://www.crude.ie/

Joshua finally digs his way to freedom after being trapped for six months in a hole he accidentally fell into, only to find that he’s been replaced by a racist ethereal being from dimensions beyond our comprehension. As Corbin, Geronimo, and “Paul” discuss MORE upcoming Marvel movies and the Kyoto Animation fire, Joshua fights desperately to preserve the integrity of the show. Donate to victims of Kyoto Animation attack: https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2019/07/24-1/kyoto-animation-officially-starts-accepting-donations-through-bank-transfer Music: Joshua Sounds: Corbin

Joshua finally digs his way to freedom after being trapped for six months in a hole he accidentally fell into, only to find that he’s been replaced by a racist ethereal being from dimensions beyond our comprehension. As Corbin, Geronimo, and “Paul” discuss MORE upcoming Marvel movies and the Kyoto Animation fire, Joshua fights desperately to preserve the integrity of the show. Donate to victims of Kyoto Animation attack: https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2019/07/24-1/kyoto-animation-officially-starts-accepting-donations-through-bank-transfer Music: Joshua Sounds: Corbin

Dr. Lerebours was born in New York, the son of a Haitian immigrant father who was an ophthalmologist. He attended Howard University for medical school and was part of the Nth Dimension, which encouraged female and minority students to go into orthopedics rather than the usual gynecology or internal medical. Keeping his finger on the pulse of progress in orthopedics, Dr. Lerebours now performs robotic total knee replacements, uses the direct superior approach for total hip replacements, and is doing... The post Dr. Franz Lerebours appeared first on Meet the Doctors.

ETAO Podcast, Episode 57. Zach Chandler catches the bus with us and talks about Nth Dimension[al] Hiking, his gently arcane spectral traverse-’em-up. We discuss Zach’s guiding principle, namely that if you’re going to make a game that isn’t obvious, then you’d better be sure that it’s nonetheless truthful. That’s easier said than done, of course, … Continue reading "Weird Mad Stuff, with Zachariah Chandler"

It's Episode 1! Liz and Will pitch the roaming scrap-em-up Beat Down against retro platformer Zool: The Ninja of the Nth Dimension. Who wins? you decide! check out our poll on Twitter @fiercefeedback and email us on fiercefeedback@gmail.com to send us your memories, complaints and complements! 

On this week’s episode, Mikey Black returns for his second appearance and we chat about “Randy Travis Day”, James’ half ass yoga practices, the trials of working customer service, Mikey poses the question “what would you do without your phone when you go to the bathroom” and we learn about Cap shitting in public.ARTIST: RavagersSONG: Suzi Has An UziHave something to share with us? Tag #SomethingGoodForYa on FB, Twitter and IG and we’ll see it!Follow us on FB and Twitter at @SomethingGFYYou can also support the CODPOD Network for only $3 a month + get exclusive shows for Patrons only!https://www.patreon.com/CultOfDave

It was the early 1990s, and Nintendo and Sega were going head to head in a 16-bit battle of the mascots, but what about the world of home computers? What about the Commodore Amiga? Meet Zool: the Amiga’s platforming ninja gremlin with a penchant for Chupa Chups lollipops and, evidently, British rave music…

It was the early 1990s, and Nintendo and Sega were going head to head in a 16-bit battle of the mascots, but what about the world of home computers? What about the Commodore Amiga? Meet Zool: the Amiga's platforming ninja gremlin with a penchant for Chupa Chups lollipops and, evidently, British rave music…

Into the Nth Dimensionby David D. LevineThe fence around Dr. Diabolus's lair is twenty feet tall, electrified and topped with razor wire.  I'd expected no less.  From one of the many pouches at my belt I pull a pair of acorns and toss them at the base of the fence. I exert my special power.  Each acorn immediately sprouts, roots digging through asphalt as the leafy stem reaches skyward.  Wood fibers KRACKLE as the stems extend, lengthen, thicken, green skin changing to grayish bark in a moment.  Leaves SSHHH into existence; branches reach out to the neighbor tree, twining themselves into rungs. Before the twin oaks have reached their full height I spring into action, clambering up the living ladder as it grows, creeping along a limb even as it extends over the razor wire.  It's a dramatic, foolhardy move, but I can't delay -- Sprout is in peril!  The branch sags under my weight, lowering me to within ten feet of the ground, and I leap down with practiced ease. Full transcript after the cut:----more----Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 22 for February ... 20th, oops. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you!Our story today is "Into the Nth Dimension" by David D. Levine, read by... David D. Levine.David is the author of novel Arabella of Mars, which will be out from Tor Books in July 2016, and over fifty science fiction and fantasy stories. His story “Tk’Tk’Tk” won the Hugo Award in 2006, and he has been shortlisted for awards including the Hugo, Nebula, Campbell, and Sturgeon. Stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, numerous Year’s Best anthologies, and his award-winning collection Space Magic.Oh, just one more thing! While I was putting this episode together the SFWA Nebula award nominations came out, and David JUST, as in, literally minutes ago, received a Nebula nomination for his story "Damage," which was released on Tor.com. Congratulations!GlitterShip would also like to congratulate some of the authors whose stories appeared in previous episodes: Ken Liu (Episode 15), was nominated for best Novel for his book "The Grace of Kings", Rose Lemberg (Episode 7) was nominated for her novelette "Grandmother-nai-Leylit's Cloth of Winds", and Sarah Pinsker (Episode 2) was also nominated for a novelette, "Our Lady of the Open Road."Ok. NOW you can listen to the story.Into the Nth Dimensionby David D. LevineThe fence around Dr. Diabolus's lair is twenty feet tall, electrified and topped with razor wire.  I'd expected no less.  From one of the many pouches at my belt I pull a pair of acorns and toss them at the base of the fence. I exert my special power.  Each acorn immediately sprouts, roots digging through asphalt as the leafy stem reaches skyward.  Wood fibers KRACKLE as the stems extend, lengthen, thicken, green skin changing to grayish bark in a moment.  Leaves SSHHH into existence; branches reach out to the neighbor tree, twining themselves into rungs. Before the twin oaks have reached their full height I spring into action, clambering up the living ladder as it grows, creeping along a limb even as it extends over the razor wire.  It's a dramatic, foolhardy move, but I can't delay -- Sprout is in peril!  The branch sags under my weight, lowering me to within ten feet of the ground, and I leap down with practiced ease. Again I concentrate, and the two trees wither away behind me, a gnawed patch of asphalt and a few stray leaves the only sign they'd ever existed.  I feel their pain as they wilt and die, but I don't want my intrusion discovered sooner than necessary.  The loss of their green and growing lives is just the latest of the many sacrifices I've made.  I press onward.Slippery elm makes short work of the side door lock; mushrooms blind security cameras and heat sensors.  These bright corridors, humming with electricity and weirder energies, are cold places of steel and concrete, offering me no plants or plant matter to leverage my powers.  I've faced worse.  I prowl quickly, silently, keeping my head down, all senses alert to any trace of the kidnapped Sprout.Voices!  I duck into an alcove as two of Dr. Diabolus's goons round the corner.  As soon as they've passed I spring out behind them, tossing seeds at their feet.  Fast-twining English ivy ensnares one before he can cry out, but the other evades its tendrils.  "Phyto-Man!" he gasps.POW! my fist responds.  He drops cold beside his still-struggling comrade, whose eyes glare with hatred above his smothered mouth.  I direct the ivy to bind the unconscious goon as well, so he'll raise no alarm when he awakes.Even their underwear is synthetic fiber.  Dr. Diabolus is thorough, I'll grant him that.Deeper and deeper into the cavernous lair I probe, keeping an eye on the pipes and conduits that line the ceiling, smaller leading to larger, following the branch to find the trunk.  I know Dr. Diabolus; wherever he's holding my sidekick it will be near his latest contrivance, and all his inventions require massive amounts of power. If only he'd gone solar instead of stealing plutonium, we might have been allies.At last I come to a massive, vault-like door, all steel and chrome, set in a concrete wall into which many thick conduits vanish.  But nothing is more persistent than a plant.  I tuck dozens of tiny dandelion seeds into the crack between door and jamb.  Their indomitable roots reach deep, swelling and prying, until with a WHANGG of tearing metal the door bursts from its frame. With my own muscles I wrench the shattered door aside and burst into the chamber.  Dr. Diabolus turns to me, cape swirling.  "You disappoint me, Phyto-Man," he sneers, his artificial eye glowing red.  "I expected you here half an hour ago.""Traffic was terrible," I quip.  The chamber is dominated by a complex machine, seething with arcane energies that make my head swim, but there's no sign of Sprout.  "What have you done with my sidekick, you fiend?""I sent him to... the Nth Dimension!"  He pulls a lever on the control panel before him.  A ten-foot iris of blue steel in the center of the machine SNICKs open, revealing...Looking into the opening makes my eyes feel like they're being pulled out of my head.  It's as though all the colors of the palette have somehow been smeared together with... others... forming impossible combinations of hue and tone that swirl sickeningly.  But worse than that, the weird amalgam of color seems to bend... around a corner that isn't there.  It's painful to see, even harder to look away.CHANGG!  Something hard and cold fastens onto my bicep, breaking the spell.  "What?" I cry.  Before I can move, a second steel claw CHANGGs onto my other arm.  CHANGG!  CHANGG!  CHANGG!  I'm caught like a fly, steel bracelets ringing my arms, legs, and neck.  Jointed metal arms haul me off the floor, suspend me in the air before the gloating Dr. Diabolus. "HAHAHAHAHA!" he laughs as I struggle in vain.  "You've foiled my plans for the last time, Phyto-Man!""If you've harmed Sprout--!" I growl through clenched teeth, straining against the imprisoning metal."My dear Phyto-Man, I must confess... I don't know!"  He works the controls and the arms propel me, none too gently, toward the yawning portal.  The uncanny colors swirl crazily, filling my vision, seeming to tug at every fiber of my being.  "But whatever has become of your Sprout, you will shortly be joining him there.  Bon voyage, Emerald Avenger!"The arms thrust me forward.  With a SPRANK! the five claws open simultaneously, flinging me into the swirling abyss.A hard, gritty surface presses against my side.  I'm cold, my head is spinning, and everything hurts.  There's a thin, rushing sound off in the distance.  Traffic?I sit up and open my eyes.  And immediately I wish I hadn't.There's nothing to see but a cracked and filthy concrete floor and my own hands, but they're all wrong... seriously wrong.  The floor curves away from me in every direction -- the same impossible curvature I'd seen in Dr. Diabolus's portal -- despite the fact that it looks and feels flat.  And the surface looks like... like concrete multiplied by itself.  Cracks are crackier.  Grit is grittier.  It's all realer than real; it pounds on my eyes as though I were staring into the sun, though there's barely any light.  And the color is not just gray, but a weird amalgam of thousands of different grays blended smoothly together.  A whole shining rainbow of grays.My heart is pounding.   I've faced death many times, fought monsters, escaped from traps, but I've never experienced anything this disturbing.  Always before the threat came from outside, but now it's me -- my own perceptions -- that have changed.My hands, too, are a disconcerting, amplified version of themselves.  I turn them before my eyes, and as they rotate I seem to see both sides at the same time as the front.  In color they are... kind of an ultra-pink, not the plain pink I've seen every day of my life but an eye-hurting blend of unnatural shades.  Pinks that don't exist, have never existed.  And as I look more closely I see disturbing swirls of texture in my skin, spiraling like microscopic galaxies, like nothing I've ever seen before.I swallow and rip my attention away from my own fingers.  Have I been drugged?  I shake my head hard, but that just makes the headache and dizziness worse.  I pound my fists on the ground, but though I feel the impact and the pain there's no comforting THUD, just a muffled thump so faint and distant I might as well be imagining it. "Hello?" I call.  No, nothing wrong with my hearing; my voice bounces back to me from the darkness, echoing off the distant, unseen walls.To my surprise there's an immediate reply.  "Michael?"  The voice is heartbreakingly familiar.  I feel a twinge of hope."Sprout?"  I peer into the darkness, hoping for a glimpse of green tights and pointed shoes.  It's a ridiculous outfit.  Why have we never changed it?And why have I never wondered that before?"It's me, Michael.  Richard."A familiar figure appears in the dim distance, but with everything so strange here I can't afford to relax.  "Is this a secure area?  We should stick to code names...""No need.  There's no Sprout here, and no Phyto-Man either."Worries spring up in my mind -- impostors, hypnosis, possession, brainwashing -- but I decide to bluff it out in case there are unseen observers.  "Well, I'm here now, Sprout." "This all seems very strange, I know, but don't worry.  Everything will be all right."Despite his reassurances, there's a strangeness about Sprout as he approaches.  He's wearing street clothes, in colors and textures as hallucinogenic as everything else here, and his face combines familiarity with an alien super-reality exactly as my own hands do, but the really disturbing thing is the way he moves.  Each step flows into the next with a weird gliding motion that propels him forward seamlessly, without transitions.  It's like he's rolling toward me on a treadmill, constantly cresting a hill that isn't there.  I push down feelings of nausea and... and fear.  Never in all my adventures have I faced anything as disquieting as this place.  "Where am I?""Dr. Diabolus called it the Nth Dimension, but the people here just call it the world."  He's reached me now, and the mingled concern and relief in his face match the conflicting emotions in my own heart.  "I'm so glad you're finally here."He bends down and helps me to my feet, a disturbing reversal, and I find that I move with the same unnatural glide that he does.  Even more disturbing, I find I'm naked.  "My costume!"  I cover myself with my hands as best I can, but the loss of my belt pouches, my carefully nurtured collection of seeds, leaves me feeling not just nude but defenseless.I reach out with my powers.  Perhaps a seed from a discarded Fig Newton lies in a crack on the floor, a seed I can grow into leaves to cover my nakedness.  But there's nothing; my powers are dulled almost to nonexistence.  I can feel wood beams supporting the ceiling high above, but I can't warp them to my will. I'm helpless.  For the first time in... I can't remember when."Don't worry," Sprout says, "no one here wears costumes.  I brought you some clothes."  He turns, the motion revealing sides and back, width and depth and thickness, all at once.  I groan and nearly lose my balance.  "Oh!" he says.  "I'm sorry.  Try closing one eye.  It helps."I do, and it does -- the colors are still wrong but the disorienting sense of everything being too far away and too close at the same time is greatly reduced.  Sprout -- Richard -- reaches into a rustling paper bag and hands me a folded bundle. Putting the clothes on is a challenge.  Each trouser leg recedes like a portal to another world; buttons and zippers feel much larger, more detailed than they should.  I close my eyes completely and let my instincts take over.  It makes a big difference.  How many times in my life have I dressed myself?  But this still feels like the first time.I sit on the filthy floor to tie the unfamiliar shoes.  "That's better," I say.  "Now let's get to work."  Maybe action will still the trembling dread in my heart.  "There's no time to lose -- we need to get back to our own dimension and defeat Dr. Diabolus before it's too late!"Richard smiles and shakes his head.  I'm starting to get used to the weird multi-dimensional effect.  "Don't worry, there's plenty of time."  He puts out a hand.  "Come on.  I'll explain over coffee."Sprout's lack of concern raises anew the questions I'd had about drugs, hypnosis, imposters.  But, lost in a strange, incomprehensible world, I have no better alternative to offer.  I take his hand. His hand is warm and soft in mine.  When was the last time I'd grasped it without gloves, without haste, without danger all around? He leads me across the floor -- now that my eyes have adapted a bit to the darkness and strangeness I see that the space is a cavernous, disused warehouse -- to a corroded metal door.  It opens with a muted squeak of rusty hinges, not the SKREEK I would have expected, but once we pass through it to the street I'm assaulted by a cacophony of sounds, visions, and smells more intense than New Year's Eve in Metro City.  Cars in an astonishing variety of designs and colors careen by, with the same seamless motion as Sprout's walk but a hundred times faster.  Each one seems to zoom in from the horizon and vanish away to infinity all in a moment, but even as they speed by I can't help but notice their scratches and dents and chips in the paint and a hundred other details.  It's a dizzying kaleidoscope of color and detail."Whoa!" I cry out as Sprout hauls me back from the curb."Careful, big guy."  He pats my shoulder.  "You're not invulnerable here.""Well, I've never been in Dynamic Man's league...""No, I mean you can really get hurt easily.  It doesn't take much, and it takes a long time to heal.  Look at this."  He pulls up his sleeve, revealing a hideous scab on his elbow.  "I scraped this on a brick wall when I first got here.  Just a little scrape, nothing I'd even have noticed if I were in a fist fight with the Demolisher, but it hurt like a son of a bitch --"I've never heard such language.  "Sprout!""-- and a month later it's still not all the way better."A month?  Immediately I'm on high alert again.  Has the imposter slipped up?  Sprout only disappeared the day before yesterday.But he notices the change in my expression -- faces here seem more subtle, more expressive -- and puts up a hand.  "Sorry.  We're on a monthly schedule.  One or two of our days, more or less, is a month here.  I should have told you right away."  His eyes dip to the sidewalk.  "There's a lot I should have told you, before."My suspicions are only slightly allayed, but I still have little alternative but to stick with this person, whether or not he's the Sprout I know.  Whoever he is, he just saved my life.We walk to a coffee shop.  Safe from the chaos of the street, I can begin to appreciate the wonder of this world -- the colors and textures, the tears in the vinyl seat's upholstery, the individual grains of spilled sugar on the laminate tabletop.  My spoon makes a tiny tink, tink noise as I stir my coffee.  The flavor is astonishing -- rich and sweet and dark.  "So you've been here a whole month?" He nods.  "I showed up in the same place you did.  It's the closest analog in this world to Dr. Diabolus's lair.  It took me quite a while to figure this place out, but I finally did.""You always were the brains of this partnership."  Before Sprout, there had been no Phyto-Computer, no chemical lab, no advanced cross-breeding program in the Hidden Greenhouse.  I'd really been little more than a thug with a green thumb."This world... it's like a layer above our world.  Everything here is... bigger.  More complex.  More detailed.  Even the color spectrum... there's an infinity of different colors here, Michael."I think back on the time I fell into the Hollow Earth, and how I had to help the downtrodden people there throw off the tyrannical overlord Karg before I could return to the surface.  "Then they must have even bigger problems than we do.  More villainous villains!  More despotic despots!  More disastrous natural disasters!"  I find myself grinning with anticipation.  "This could be our greatest adventure!""You might think so, but I haven't seen any sign of it.  There aren't any villains here.""It's some kind of Utopia, then?""Not really."  His face squinches up the way it does when he's thinking hard.  "There are people who do bad things.  But every time someone does something that seems entirely villainous to me, a whole bunch of other people come along and say it was really the right thing to do.  I'm kind of confused, really."  He shakes his head.  "Even bank robbers have their defenders here.  And there are tornadoes and hurricanes and earthquakes, but they're... diffuse.  I mean, yeah, people get hurt, but you never see the President's daughter trapped under a collapsed building or someone racing to get the secret plans to the hidden base before the whole Eastern Seaboard becomes uninhabitable.""Sounds... boring.""Oh, it's not!"  His eyes brighten and he grabs my hands across the table.  "It's the most wonderful place, Michael.  There's art and culture and nature like nothing you've ever seen.  Not just stuffy charity balls where the only exciting thing is when The Rutabaga tries to steal the debutante's diamond necklace.  I can't wait to show you Turandot."I pull my hands from his.  "Whoa, whoa, whoa, kiddo.  We're not here to be tourists.  We're here for a reason.  And once our job is done here, we'll go back where we came from.  That's the way the world works.""Not this world.  In this world you can do whatever you want, make the best of what you've got, succeed or fail or just muddle along... you're not limited to playing the role you were born into, fighting the same villains and foiling the same plots over and over again.  Not like our world."  He reaches into his hoodie's front pocket, pulls out a slim colorful magazine.  "To the people here, we're fictional!"The title of the magazine is The Amazing Phyto-Man, issue 157.  On the cover, a hulking over-muscled brute with a ridiculous green outfit and a caricature of my own face smacks a tentacled monstrosity in the beak.  The pages inside are divided into squares and rectangles, each bearing a picture and some text...It shows the whole story of how I got here.  Over the fence, down the corridors, the confrontation with Dr. Diabolus, the metal arms flinging me into the portal.I feel as though the world has been jerked out from under my feet.  "This is impossible.  Absurd.  Some kind of hoax.""It's no hoax.  There were ten copies of this one on the rack I bought it from.  All our friends have their own publications too."  He taps the final panel, showing me screaming as I fall into the swirling colors... but the colors on the page are the flat, limited palette of the world I came from.  "This is how I knew you'd be arriving here."I stare at the page.  It's wood pulp with vegetable inks.  My powers are weak here, almost nonexistent, but I can feel the minuscule thread of green life in it.  In some ways this stupid little magazine is the only thing in the whole chromium-and-vinyl coffee shop that's real. The only thing that's real...I turn back a page.  It's one large panel, with Dr. Diabolus laughing "HAHAHAHAHA!" as I struggle in the grip of the metal arms.  I stare at his flat, cartoonish face.I exert my power. It's not easy.  What I'm trying to do is unlike anything I've ever done before.  My teeth grind together; my pulse pounds in my temples. This is as hard and as strange as the very first time I ever made a seed sprout. It had been an apple seed, a discarded pip from my lunch, that happened to be lying on the floor the day that eerie green-glowing meteorite had crashed into the experimental greenhouse with its stocks of Growth Serum X.  That tiny seed, and the potential apple tree within, had been all that stood between me and certain death as the heavy beam had come crashing down toward me.  As though in a dream I'd sensed its potential, I'd reached out, I'd pulled harder than I'd ever pulled on anything before... and the tree burst into being, root and branch and leaf cushioning the beam's fall and saving my life.That had been the first time I'd felt that green power flowing through me.  Now I feel it again, a thin green thread of life pulsing in the dead, flattened wood pulp before me.  But this time it's different somehow, pulling at me even as I pull at it.Sweat stings my eyes and runs down my nose.  I keep straining...And then Dr. Diabolus blinks. The caricature face turns fractionally toward me, its look of triumph beginning to change into one of astonishment...It's more than I can sustain.  I collapse, my breath rushing out in a whoosh as I fall back into the padded seat.  The page before me reverts to its previous form, but I feel a sense of triumph. Sprout snatches the magazine away.  "What did you do?" "I used my powers.  I touched our world.  I made a change." "So what?""We can use this!"  I pound the table.  "I don't know how, but somehow we can use this magazine to get back to our own world!""Hush!" Sprout pats the air with his hands; I notice that the server and the other patrons are staring.  I sit down, noticing as I do that I'd surged to my feet.  "Michael... I don't want to go back to the world we came from.""We have to!"He looks at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. And then he bolts from the table. I stare stupidly at the door as the little bell over it tinkles, then take off after him.Sprout's fast, but ever since that day in the experimental greenhouse I've been stronger and tougher and faster than most people, and at least some of that seems to have come through the portal with me.  I manage to make it through the door before his heels vanish around the corner.Running in this world is a kaleidoscopic, hallucinogenic experience.  Walls seem to rush at me, a riot of color and texture; cars veer and swerve, horns blaring.  But I keep my eyes fixed on Sprout's blue hoodie as he dashes across streets, pushes through crowds of protesting civilians, runs down alleys. Block after block, I'm gaining.  Sprout was always the smart one in our partnership, but I'm the one who battled The Piledriver to a standstill.  Soon I'm only a few feet behind.We're racing down an alley, dodging around dumpsters and piles of newspaper, when I get almost close enough to touch him.  He looks over his shoulder... and trips on a bundle of magazines.  He tumbles on the concrete with an "oomph" that sounds almost like something from our original world.I catch up to him just as he's sitting up.  Bright red blood runs from his nose; there's a rusty smell.  "Guh?" he says.I bend down, put an arm around his shoulder.  "Are you all right, old buddy?"He stares into my eyes for a moment, blood painting his nose and mouth.And then he kisses me.I taste blood.  I feel his warm lips soft under mine. I kiss him back.Then, horrified, I push him away.  "What are we doing, Sprout?""Kissing.  And you liked it as much as I did."  His bloody lips twist into an ironic smile.  "If you couldn't figure that much out, I guess I really am the brains of this partnership.""But... but you're just a kid!"He glares at me.  "I'm twenty-two, Michael."Twenty-two?  It's strange to realize that he's right.  He was fifteen when I adopted him after Maniac killed his parents, but that was... seven years ago.  Where did the time go?  How had I failed to notice he'd grown into a lithe, attractive young man?  "Even so... it's... it's wrong.""Maybe where we came from.  Not here."  He pulls a bandana from his pocket, wipes his mouth.  Blood still trickles from his nose but it's slowing.  "This world is better than ours, Michael.  It's complex and it's mundane and it's sometimes tedious, but it's not just the same round of villains and fights and secret identities over and over again.  It's... it's real, Michael.  And here I can be what I've always wanted to be, instead of just playing a role."  He holds out the bandana.  "And so can you."Sprout keeps holding out the bandana. After a while I take it, and wipe my own mouth.Then I stand up. "I'm a hero, Richard.  It may be a role, but it's the only role I know."Sprout just looks at me.  The expression on his blood-spattered face is a sick compound of longing, sadness, disappointment.  Perhaps I'm learning how to understand what I see in this world.I wonder what the expression on my own face tells him."Give me the magazine, Sprout.  We'll take it to the warehouse where we came in.  I figure that's the best place to try going back to our world.""No."Sprout lies at my feet, looking so small and weak, the front of his blue hoodie stained black with his blood.  I could take the magazine from him easily.  "I'll find another copy.""You don't have any money to buy one.""I'll steal it."He gives a weak little laugh.  "Liar."I have to smile myself.  "Okay, maybe not."  I sit back down.  "Come back with me, Sprout.  You know it's where we belong."He sits up, leans against me.  His shoulder is warm, the only warm thing in this cold, garbage-strewn alley, and I let it rest on my chest.  "Give this world a chance, Michael.  You've only just arrived.  I've already found a job at a nursery.  You could work there too."  He looks up at me.  His nose has stopped bleeding.  "We could share the apartment."I consider the idea.  I put my arm around my sidekick, lean back against the filthy brick wall, and think very hard about it.  This world is amazing, with its details and colors and motions and flavors.  And to share it with Sprout would be... something I hadn't even realized I desired. But in the end, it's duty that wins out.  "I'm sorry, Sprout.  Even if I wanted to -- and there's a part of me that does, believe me -- it's more than just you and me.  There are people depending on us back home.  If we don't go back there, who'll keep the Scimitar Sisters in check?"  I give him one last squeeze, disentangle myself, and stand up.  "Coming?""You're sure I can't change your mind?"I'm so, so tempted.  "I'm sure.""Then I'm coming too."  He stands, brushes himself off.  "I'd rather be a cartoon hero with you than alone here."We walk hand-in-hand back to the warehouse.  As we pass the coffee shop, I pause.  Sprout looks up at me, expectant.  "I, uh... I still have some of my powers here."  I clear my throat.  "I wonder if there's.... if there's any way we can bring... some of this world, back to ours?""I don't think so."  He points to a small shield printed in the corner of the magazine's cover.  "There are rules against it."Finally we find ourselves again in the dark, echoey space where we entered this world.  I think about how strange it looked to me when I first arrived, and I realize I've grown used to these new perceptions.  My old world will seem so flat and colorless by comparison. Sprout stands beside me as I spread the magazine out in a patch of sunlight.  There is no joy in me as I contemplate the garish images full of POW and KRUNCH, only a dull sense of obligation.  "It's not too late to change your mind," Sprout says.  "We can make a life together here.""I'm sorry, Sprout.  Our world needs saving."  But even as I say it, I know I'm trying to convince myself as well as him.  I hold out my hand.Without a word, he takes it.I bend down and stare hard at the last page, showing my cartoon avatar falling into the vortex between worlds.  I exert my will, block out all other sensations, focus my powers on the ink-saturated wood pulp.  Somehow, I know, I can use this image of the portal to return myself and Sprout to the world where we were born.It's the hardest thing I've ever done. I concentrate.  I work my power.  I push and pull and strain... this is as hard as the time I used pea vines to temporarily close up the Grand Canyon.  Harder.I strain still more intensely.  The printed vortex begins to whirl...I feel again, just as I did on that first day in the experimental greenhouse, the deep connection between my soul and the green life underlying the page...I feel the warmth of Sprout's hand in mine...And I realize that the connection runs both ways. With an unprecedented effort of will, I reverse my power. Where before the meteor's green energy had flowed into me at my moment of greatest need, now I send the energy flowing from myself into the printed page. I scream in pain as the power drains from me like my life's blood. The image before me springs to life.  Just as the metal claws release, the cartoon me on the page reaches down and tears open his belt.  Seeds of all descriptions pour out in their thousands, most falling into the vortex, but many others sprouting and twining and filling the portal with leaves and stems and branches.  I bounce off the web of vegetable matter, springing right back toward Dr. Diabolus.  WHAM!  My fist connects with the villain's chin.Then all is blackness.Later.  I open my eyes, and the first thing I see is Dr. Diabolus's lab.  Everything is flat, static, in eight garish colors.  But then I blink, and realize I've fallen face-first into the magazine spread on the floor before me.I sit up.  I'm no longer looking at the last page of The Amazing Phyto-Man issue 157.  It's now the first page of issue 158, a single large panel.  In it Dr. Diabolus, threatened by an enormous Venus flytrap, cowers at the controls of his dimensional portal, through which a grinning Sprout steps to take the hand of Phyto-Man.  All's well in Metro City."Michael?"  Richard is just awakening beside me.  "Wha... what just happened?"It takes me a long, reflective moment to find an answer to his question.  "I... I sent the power back where it came from, I think."  I look within myself.  It certainly isn't in there any more.  "It's with him now."  I tap the page. Richard's eyes dart from the page to my face.  "But that's you.""Not any more.  I'm just Michael now."  I stroke the flat, cartoon version of myself with my fingertips.  "Phyto-Man is back where he belongs.  I don't know how much of me went with him, but I hope... I hope he enjoyed his day in this world.  Maybe he can use what I learned here to make Metro City a better place.""But what about... us?  What happens next?"I close the magazine.  "I don't know.  Isn't it amazing?"END“Into the Nth Dimension” was originally published in Human For A Day, edited by Jennifer Brozek and Martin H. Greenberg in 2011.This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back on March 1st with “Je me souviens” by Su J. Sokol.

Her Last Breath Before Wakingby A.C. WiseShe is a city haunted by a ghost.When the architect dreams, her sinews are suspension bridges, her ribs vaulting arches, her bones steel I-beams, and her blood concrete. In her dreams, the city is pristine and perfect. She is perfect.The architect has a lover who is afraid to sleep. At night, the lover lays her head against the architect’s chest. Instead of breath and pulse, she hears the rumble of high-speed trains.Full transcript after the cut.----more----Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 21 for February 2, 2016. I am your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.Today's story is "Her Last Breath Before Waking" by A.C. Wise.Before I get to the story, I just wanted to mention that GlitterShip is currently eligible for the Best Fancast category of the Hugo Awards. I wasn't really sure if GlitterShip was a "fancast" or a "semiprozine" but I thought I should check just in case anyone asked me.That said, if you like GlitterShip, the best thing you can do is tell your friends to start listening. If they're interested in LGBTQIA short fiction but are unable to access audio (or just don't like it!), they can read all of the GlitterShip stories on our website at glittership.comA.C. Wise's short stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Apex, Shimmer, and, The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2015, among other places. Her debut collection, The Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron Saves the World Again, was published by Lethe Press in October 2015. In addition to her fiction, she co-edits Unlikely Story, and contributes a monthly Women to Read: Where to Start column to SF Signal. Find her online at www.acwise.net.Our guest reader this week is Amanda Fitzwater.Amanda Fitzwater is a dragon wearing a human meat suit from Christchurch, New Zealand. A graduate of Clarion 2014, she’s had stories published in Lethe Press’ “Heiresses of Russ 2014”, “Daughters of Frankenstein: Lesbian Mad Scientists”, and recently an essay in Twelfth Planet Press’ “Letters to Tiptree”. Look out for stories coming soon from Shimmer Magazine and The Future Fire. As a narrator, her voice has been heard across the Escape Artists Network, on Redstone SF, and Interzone. She tweets under her penname as @AJFitzwater   Her Last Breath Before Wakingby A.C. WiseShe is a city haunted by a ghost.When the architect dreams, her sinews are suspension bridges, her ribs vaulting arches, her bones steel I-beams, and her blood concrete. In her dreams, the city is pristine and perfect. She is perfect.The architect has a lover who is afraid to sleep. At night, the lover lays her head against the architect’s chest. Instead of breath and pulse, she hears the rumble of high-speed trains.The architect stands on the balcony of her close apartment looking over the city-that-is and seeing the city-that-might-be. She smokes thin cigarettes and mentally replaces the burnt-out factory and its blind-eye smashed windows with a row of gleaming, silver towers. Once she builds them, her towers will scrape the stars.“The city is rotten,” she says; she doesn’t turn around.“I like the city,” says the architect’s lover, so softly she might not be heard. “It’s where we met.”But the architect isn’t listening. Her hands sketch forms on the air, rewriting the view with shimmering art deco buildings, glistening fountains, and wide, chilly plazas.The architect’s lover creeps outside to stand beside the architect. She hates visiting the architect here; it’s too high. The wind plucks at her. She doesn’t like seeing the city spread out this way, reduced to brick and wood, stone and smudges of light. Her own apartment is close to the ground, where she can step out the door and feel worn cobblestones beneath her feet.Sometimes, even though she knows the architect would disapprove, the architect’s lover goes outside barefoot. She stands in her doorway and breathes in the stench of factories, blanketing the city in smoke. She breathes in the crackling, golden scent of fresh bread from the bakery on the corner. She breathes in the rotting geraniums in her neighbor’s window box. But most of all, she breathes in the stink of the river, because once upon a time it smelled like the promise of a new world.On those days, the architect’s lover curls her toes around the worn-smooth cobbles and drinks in the life of all the people who came before her — every horse’s hoof, every shoeless urchin, every factory-man and whore, every rainfall wearing the cobbles as round as they are now. It makes the city feel alive. It comforts her.More than once, she has tried to show the architect her city, the one she sees with her feet curled around the cobblestones, but the architect only frowns. The architect has plans. The architect’s lover would re-write the city with new-forged memories; the architect would re-write it with glass and chrome.The architect slides her arm around her lover’s waist, drawing her closer to the view, but she’s still looking at the city.“One day this will be beautiful,” the architect says.The architect’s lover looks at the architect instead of the city — the plane of her cheekbones, the sweeping lines of her neck and throat, the dark spiral of her hair.“It’s beautiful now,” she says.In the morning, the architect’s lover finds plans scattered throughout the apartment. She lay beside the architect all night, listening to the high-speed rumble of dreams moving under the architect’s skin. The architect couldn’t have drawn the plans. She must have shed them from her body in her sleep like unwanted skin.In two weeks, a tower rises where the architect’s hands traced the air, even though there have been no work crews, no scaffolds, no sound of hammers and nails. Like the plans, the architect must have dreamed it, brought it into being by force of will.The architect’s lover cannot remember what stood there before the tower, if anything at all. This makes her weep, sitting alone in a café near the river, where the architect will not see. The architect’s lover wants to remember everything about the city, imprint it on her bones: here is where she held the architect’s hand, there is where they watched long barges pole down the canal. If she can keep the city from changing, maybe she can keep the architect from changing as well.People pass the café where the architect’s lover sits, but no one seems to notice the tower. It has always been there. They take it for granted; this is the way the city is meant to be. When she tries to ask about it, people merely shrug. They walk faster; they look at the architect’s lover with strange, indulgent smiles. They shake their heads before going about their days.The next time the architect’s lover visits, the architect calls her out onto the balcony. She points to the tower that has always been there.“You see?” the architect says, indicating the top of the tower, a pyramid of glass all lit up with giant spotlights and faceted like a jewel. “One day I’ll buy you a diamond bigger and brighter than that one. I’ll string stars around your waist and wrap moonlight around your throat. I’ll drape you in fur and put pearls and feathers in your hair. You’ll never want for anything.”The architect’s lover shudders; she imagines drowning under all that weight.The architect’s lover still longs to become the architect’s wife some day, even though she fears she will die of neglect if she does, so long as she doesn’t die of a broken heart first. She has tried not to love the architect every way she knows how, but her heart keeps circling back to the day they met. It is a fixed point in time, and for the architect’s lover, it will never change.They were both strangers in the city, recognizing in each other someone else who had not yet learned to call it home. They discovered it together, exploring every street, every alley, every rooftop and doorway. As they did, the architect’s lover wrote each location on her heart, remembering the way the architect looked when she touched that lintel, this railing. The architect’s lover never saw the city until she saw it through the architect’s eyes, and now they are inextricably intertwined. After so long adrift, these twin points, architect and city, anchored her. In the secret places inside her skin and her bones, her name for both architect and city is home.What secret name the architect has for her, the architect’s lover does not know. This, she does know: The architect never learned to name the city home and she will rewrite all the places they’ve ever been together — the smoky café where they first met, drinking absinthe and watching bloated corpses float down the river; the crumbling bridge where they shared their first kiss, the architect tasting of heady wine and the architect’s lover tasting of nothing at all; the factory where they first fucked, the rough brick against the architect’s lover’s back, and broken glass crunching under their boots. Even the rotten pier where the boats that brought them both from different places long before they knew each other first landed.Even so, the architect’s lover cannot fall out of love.All the places she has written on her heart will vanish. Her heart will remain. But when those places are gone, who will they be — the architect and the architect’s lover? Who will they be, separate and together? With no history, what hope can there be for their future?The architect’s lover is afraid the architect will rewrite her if she falls asleep. So she stays awake, eating cold, tart plums the color of new bruises. She smokes cigarettes she can’t stand the taste of, and drinks coffee so thick the spoon stands on its own when she forgets it halfway through stirring.She does all these things and tries not to think of the architect’s hands on her body when they fuck, placing causeways in the curve of her hip, a spiral staircase winding around her spine, a domed cathedral to replace her skull.She can’t tell the architect of her fear. She can’t tell her she’s afraid, or she’ll lose the architect even sooner. She is losing her. Has lost her. Will lose her again and again. She wants to lose her, and yet the architect’s lover is afraid of coming unmoored again, losing the only place she can call home.So instead she tries to imagine making herself vast enough to hold a city entire, her arms long enough to encompass bridges and canals, wrapped so tight nothing will ever crumble. Even in her dreams, in the rare moments she lets herself sleep, she fails.These are the architect’s dreams.One: She replaces her bones with scaffolding. Her eyes become window glass, shattering sunlight. Her jaw sings a bridge’s span, made musical by the tramping of a thousand feet. All through her are tunnels, connecting everything. Her veins are marble. Her foundation stone. Her heart a cavernous station thundering with countless trains. She is vast and contains multitudes. And she is beautiful.Two: She is very young and playing on the river bank with her brother and her cousin. It is summer and they are barefoot, squishing mud between their toes, feeling the wet, green life of fish and frogs and stilt-legged birds. They break off reeds from the shore and whip-thin branches from the overhanging trees, weaving them into impossible, organic structures. She is not the architect yet, in these dreams, but hers are always the strongest buildings. Her brother and cousin are too impatient, their fingers too quick. They splinter the reeds, snap the wood, and throw the wrecks into the sun-glinting water. They don’t want it badly enough. Her constructions can withstand anything, bound by her force of will.Three: She is very old, but ageless. Her skin, stretched taut over bone-that-is-not-bone, is so thin the light shines through it. There is metal everywhere she can fit it. She has carved away as many pieces of herself as she can and still walk, still breathe. She has cut windows in her flesh, replaced skin with glass so the delicate structures within, the winding catwalks and promenades, are visible. She is light, so light, but she abhors the body that remains, holding her down.At night, she calls her children to her. They come creeping from the shadows, their fingers bloody from tearing her city apart by day and building it anew as dusk falls. Metal spines protrude through their skin. Electricity sparks in their bones, makes their eyes glow. They never speak, but they crackle. She has given them whips to hold, downed power lines with frayed copper ends. At her bidding, they flay her, drawing blood from her remaining skin. She closes her eyes, cries ecstasy from a throat clogged with emotion. They are so perfect, her beautiful children, but it is never enough.She is never enough.Four: In her house near the river, she lies snugged tight between her brother and cousin, breathing in their dreams. Elsewhere in the house, her mother, father, and uncle snore. The door bursts open, shatters, raining splinters. Her family, all of them, is dragged from their beds, pushed barefoot into the snow.She can see her breath as they are marched, all in a line, to the river and forced out onto the frozen surface. Under the snow, the ice is impossibly blue, and under the blue, the water is impossibly black. She is separated from everyone but her mother, who grips her hand so tight their bones grind together, and refuses to let go. There are other families, nearly the whole village, teeth chattering, shivering, confused. One man protests, and a soldier in his warm coat and fur hat breaks the man’s nose with the butt of his gun. The man makes a choking noise. He spits blood on the ice, and one yellow-white tooth. He doesn’t protest again.One of the soldiers wears a star on his hat. He barks a command in a language she doesn’t understand, and two of his men go to either end of the shivering line. They walk slowly, with their guns drawn, and shoot every third person they come upon.One, two, three. Crack. One, two, three. Crack. Her father, uncle, and cousin are sixth, eighteenth, and twenty-first in line. Her mother is thirtieth, and she is thirty-first.Each bullet is the sound of the ice cracking, her heart breaking, the feel of her mother’s cold-chapped hand grinding against her bones then letting go as the force of gravity and the terrible color of blood upon the snow pull her down.Her brother survives. She survives. The solider with the star on his hat lays a heavy hand on her shoulder. He leans forward and breathes in her face, against her ear. His breath, the only hot thing on the frozen lake, smells of sausage and cheap whiskey.“Go,” he says. “Go, and take your brother with you. I want you to remember. I want you to carry this moment with you wherever you go.”There are tears on her lashes, freezing in place. She will never let them fall. They are perfect, inverted globes, holding the last image of her family. If they fall, they will shatter, and her family will be lost forever.This is what the architect dreams.The city changes. Weak and rotten flesh is scraped away to reveal shining bone. Towers rise. Bridges cross and re-cross the city. A train thunders from uptown to midtown and beyond, rattling windows paned in sparkling glass.The architect recruits an army of children, urchins with dirty fingers. The architect’s lover sees them in the shadows of old bridges, chipping away fragments of old stone. She sees them in the streets, hurling those chunks of stone through dirt-streaked windows, exploding brick dust from ancient buildings, hastening decay. She sees them digging between the cobbles, pulling them like teeth, prying between ancient boards until they snap. Their fingers are everywhere.She listens to the architect’s plans. She listens to the trains run beneath the architect’s skin when she sleeps. The city will never be finished, never be done. By night the children will build it up, by day the children will pull it down, and put new, shining structures in its place when the moon rises again.The city will never be complete. The architect will never be complete.Although they have never spoken of it, the architect and the architect’s lover disagree.To the architect’s lover, the river smells of promise, a particular promise that smells of her mother’s skin — fried onions, boiled cabbage, and harsh soap.To the architect, the river is the smell of sickness. It is the feel of her brother’s fevered skin under the palm of her hand. The river is the color of his eyes, glazed, muddy silt from its bottom occluding his sight. It is the sound of him parting blood-cracked lips at the end, rattling out one last breath, and calling her by her mother’s name. It is the memory of him surviving the ice, and dying — as so many others did — on the refugee-choked boat carrying them to a new life, a new shore.The architect is determined she will stitch the river closed. Her thread will be iron and steel, binding up the city’s wounds, sealing her brother’s ghost underneath its skin like a bruise, where it needs must fade.Sometimes the architect likes to imagine she never touched down on the city’s shore. When her brother died, she climbed up on the rail of the boat, crowded with so many stinking refugees, and let herself fall into the churned, muddy water. She sank, rag doll arms and legs drifting loose around her, hair trailing like weeds. She breathed out and out, silver bubbles rising toward the surface, the only bright and beautiful thing in all the muck. She did not jump, but sometimes she wishes she did. Sometimes, even though she knows it is not true, she convinces herself she did jump. The river swallowed her whole. Some other girl, a drowned girl, a ghost, entered the city in her place.At her core, who the architect truly is, is different. She is still under water, still exhaling, watching those bubbles rise. She is waiting. And one day soon, she will breathe in, light, perfect, and stripped clean. She will breathe in. And wake.She tries to tell her lover these things, but she knows her lover doesn’t hear them. Somewhere, somehow, they lost their way. They met in one city, and somewhere along the way, they diverged. They look at the city now, and they see different things. The architect wonders if she can ever build a bridge strong enough to pull her lover across. And if she can’t, what will happen to them, then?The architect’s lover takes to drinking. She drinks in cafes and bars along the ever-changing river, which she scarcely recognizes anymore.Is that the place where she met the architect? Or was it over there? What of the factory, the stone bridge? What of the taste of the architect’s skin, smoky with the factory’s ghosts, sweat-slick beneath her lover’s lips? What of absinthe cradled on the architect’s tongue, and their hands held palm to palm — so tight — bone to bone? So tight they will never let go. Where are the echoes of their heels cracking in rhythm, one, two, three, as they run from one place to the next, running wild into the future?The architect’s lover doesn’t recognize herself anymore. She doesn’t know where she fits — not on the streets, where cobbles no longer rise to meet the arches of her feet; not against the architect, where sharp juts of bone meet her fingers in place of the soft hollow of a throat, the gentle curve of a hip, or the warm swell of a breast.She drinks and she smokes until her memories blur, until their edges round and grow soft like the scarcely-remembered thousand-year cobble stones. The architect’s lover shouts at strangers, her words slurring as she tells them of factories and piers and bridges that never existed.She tells them of home.When she slips up and says she is the architecture’s lover, not the architect’s, no one corrects her.She is a ghost, in love with a city.And in time, because she is afraid and she doesn’t know how to fall out of love, the architect’s lover takes home a beautiful boy whose name she can’t be bothered to remember. She fucks him precisely because it means nothing. Smoking still more cigarettes, eating chilled and bruised plums, watching him sleep, she is terribly afraid she’ll marry him one day. Still never knowing his name, the architecture’s lover will use up her body bearing the beautiful boy’s children. Children who will become the monsters of the architecture’s dream.The architect, the architecture, is all angles and planes now, the glint of steel, concrete skin. The architecture’s lover doesn’t recognize anything anymore. She is a stranger in a city she once loved, a city that held so much promise. A city she called home.The architect’s lover remembers her mother putting her on a boat. There were so many boats in those days, all leaving from different places, but all traveling to the city — a place of promise, a place of dreams. She remembers clinging to her mother’s skirt, sobbing and not wanting to let go as her mother’s hands — red and blistered from washing — urged her up the wooden gangway.“It’s a better life,” her mother told her. “You’ll have opportunities I never had, things I can’t give you. You’ll be happy there, in time. Promise me you’ll try.”She remembers gripping the ship’s rail so hard her knuckles turned white, leaning out over the churning water, waving and straining her eyes until her mother was only a vanished speck on the horizon. Landing on the city’s shore didn’t take the pain away, but stepping from the boat’s swaying deck onto firm land once more, the architect’s lover straightened her spine, keeping her promise to try. Determined to make her mother proud.This is not the city she once called home.This city is hostile. It is like the place she came from, on a boat, so long ago, a place that pushed her out, not wanting her anymore. It does not love her. It barely knows she’s alive.And yet, still, she cannot fall out of love.The architecture’s lover looks at the beautiful boy whose name she doesn’t know, and tries to love him. Silent tears run down her cheeks; she doesn’t remember why.The architect stands on her balcony high above the shining city. Her city. Towers stab defiant at the sky, bridges stitch old wounds closed, trains hum deep underground, and the winking glass that is everywhere catches the sun. Strong and true, it will never crack, never break, never crumble.Her skin is planed clean, scraped thin. Still, it is too heavy for her bones. But there is time, she knows. This is only the beginning.The architect shades her eyes, and looks toward what was once the river. People stride along what are no longer banks, small as ants from up here. They are laughing, smiling. Women, sleek in cool silk the color of her towers. Men, in crisp suits the color of ice cream that will never melt. Their teeth are impossible in the sun. They don’t remember a life other than this one. She has made it so.Everyone should have the luxury of forgetting the times when they weren’t as happy as they must be now.Still, something tugs at the edges of the architect’s mind. There is a ghost in the city. The shadow of towers, spewing smoke, and the memory of a kiss, and salt-tasting skin against her lips haunt her mind. Before her marble skin, before the columns of her spine, the tension bridge of her jaw, before the diamond pane windows of her eyes, wasn’t she someone else? Wasn’t there someone who knew her as she was, and loved her just the same?There, amid the ant-bustle on the once-shores, is a lone girl. Her feet are bare and spattered with mud. She is looking straight at the architect, across all the distance, and the people part around her like water breaking around a stone. Like she isn’t there.The architect wonders: Is that her? Or someone she used to know?Even though she can’t see them from her balcony, the architect knows: The girl’s eyes are the color of stirred silt, and blue ice. There are weeds in her hair. She raises her hand — a drowned girl, waiting to breathe, waiting to rise from the river and come ashore — and waves to the architect, but she does not smile.The architect’s lover leaves the café. She is utterly lost. She recognizes nothing here.She goes toward the water, some vague memory pulling her. But the map written on her skin is muddled. The streets, everything she thinks she knows, has been re-written.The architect’s lover is looking for someone, but she doesn’t know who. No one looks familiar here. Except…Except there is a girl, standing and looking across the water. It is a girl the architecture’s lover almost knows. The girl has eyes like silt and ice. They remind the architect’s lover of home.The architecture’s lover raises her hand, catching the girl’s attention. The girl looks at her, and the architect’s lover falls to her knees. A name catches in her throat and stalls. She can’t remember. She weeps, and doesn’t know why. In her mind, there is one word, echoing persistently and meaning nothing: Home.The architect stands on her balcony, and looks at the girl and the water. For a moment, the architect thinks there is something she has forgotten. Then she puts the thought from her mind.Soon the city will be perfect. She will tear it down and rebuild it until it is so.The architect turns. She does not raise her hand to the girl on the shore. Or the weeping woman on her knees by the girl’s side.The architect goes inside. And she does not say goodbye.END"Her Last Breath Before Waking" was originally published in 3-Lobed Burning Eye in December 2013.This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on February 16th with "Into the Nth Dimension" by David D. Levine.