The assistant is a thin, plain woman named Molly. She has big eyes and a tiny crooked mouth and an elegant, ill-suited nose that isn’t quite three years old. Tattoos of black anchors cover her body, each anchor dipped in blood. Her forearms are sprinkled with burn scars. What might have been a bullet hole forms a crease on her long neck. Everyone who knows Molly has a favorite story about her wild past, but even the true stories fail to capture the magnificent awfulness of her first thirty years. The last four have been better, if only by comparison. Her present employer is a difficult, arrogant man who loves making impossible requests, and while she hasn’t done her present job cheerfully or perfectly, she’s proven a neurotic capacity to try almost anything to make her boss smile.
We have two treats for you this week: a new story, “The Next Invasion” by Robert Reed, and an interview with short fiction editor Ellen Datlow about her upcoming anthology, Darkness.
Promo: The Empress Sword by Paulette Jaxton
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Theme music is “Clockworks” by Beatnik Turtle, used with permission. Visit TheSongOfTheDay.com for more of their music. Podcast copyright 2010, Tor.com. Story copyright Robert Reed. Art copyright Chris Buzelli. Produced by Mur Lafferty.