Hi, I'm Levar Burton, and this is Levar Burton.

In every episode I handpick a different piece of short fiction and I read it to you.

The only thing these stories have in common is that I love them and I hope you will

too. Life, y'all, is hard right now. Humanity is going through a really rough patch. I feel it. You probably do too. It can make you

want to dissociate, to pull away. So it's really wonderful to read something that makes me want to plug

back in. It's by the author Anna Maria Curtis. Now you've heard her name on the podcast before. She was the first

place winner of the writing contest we held with Faya and Tor.com a few years

back. This story of hers was published and

podcasted by the fantastic publication Uncanny magazine. Now, Anna Maria

has also been published in Strange Horizons, Fireside, Clark's World, and

beneath Ceaseless skies.

You will see in this story that she is so gifted at capturing small moments of human

connection at showing us how resilient we can be if we lean on each other.

Please check out the content advisory in the episode description if you are so inclined and now if you're ready let's take a deep breath and And begin. The coffin maker by Anna Maria Curtis. Stephanie stands in the middle of the crowded mess hall and watches the projection.

The screen shows the two main continents on Tritibay and the thin strip of land connecting

them. On top of the map, there are three blinking green dots, three living surveyors.

One dot, labeled Michael moves slowly upward to the ice continent.

It spreads over the top third of the planet.

Another, labeled Larena, moves down.

The continent she's heading toward is green on the map, an optimistic flourish.

The third dot, Ariadne's dot, remains where the three of them landed.

Across the bottom of the screen, the three surveyors' internal data are listed in neat,

...