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

Greetings, Clarksworld citizens. I hope this podcast finds you extraordinarily well.

Welcome to our second story for the month of November, 2024, issue 218. I hope that these stories have been finding you well.

I want to thank you for your ongoing support of the magazine. Whether it's a subscription or support via patreon.com forward slash Clark's World, you are the

ones keeping this magazine going each and every month. We simply cannot do this without you.

If you haven't yet considered helping the magazine out financially, please consider doing so.

It is Clarkshaldcitizens.com or patreon.com for slash clerksworld.

Our second story of the month is called Mirror Stages and is by Claire Jowen.

Claire Jowen is a speculative fiction writer originally from the 626 and has been previously published in Corio.

Currently, she is a student with a background in media studies and algorithmic fairness.

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

The man in the Navy Cosmo Corp suit calls it self-reconciliation therapy.

This place they've dumped you, where the walls are made of mirrors.

But they aren't mirrors, are they?

Sure, you raise a hand and the woman in the not mirror waves.

God, our lustrous hair, thick lashes fanning over

doe eyes. Not a lick of body hair every inch plucked and lasered, soft and satin smooth. It's Nadia,

Paris. You remember a girl winking from billboard-wrapped skyscrapers.

You remember Cosmo Corpse, darling starlet, slender and slim and skinny and thin.

Everybody in this country and the world has shared a meal with Nadia Paris, your voice, or a translation of it, murmuring through immersion headphones. But you are not Nadia Paris.

And yet, you remember. You were seven. One of the tech corps came bottom side. You didn't

bother to distinguish between the corpos at the time, but you knew

...