A preliminary draft of William Shunn's memoir The Accidental Terrorist can be heard in serialized form in his free podcast. Listen now, while all episodes are still available!

Today the online audio fantasy magazine PodCastle presents an old short story of Bill's for your Halloween listening pleasure.

A free podcast, PodCastle presents readings of at least one original or reprinted fantasy story every week. This week they feature Bill's short story "Colin and Ishmael in the Dark," which originally appeared in print in the September 1993 issue of Science Fiction Age. You can listen to the story, or download the audio file, here.

We suggest listening with the lights off, for best effect. Happy Halloween!

Of the Six Fundamental Machines inscribed by the Builder in the Cornerstone of Time, the Wheel and Axle lends itself to perhaps the most stupendous domain of potential recomplications. Picture the sky as a giant clockwork mechanism—each planet a semiprecious stone set in the rim of its own great wheel, ticking about the axis of a star that is in turn a chip of diamond studding the rim of its own greater wheel, one that inscribes a unique but interdependent path about the center of gravity of a galaxy that is itself less than a cog on a still greater wheel that in concert with hundreds of billions of others drives the engine of the Universe. Fractal geometry on a scale to beggar the imagination.

Now zoom in again to picture yourself on the rim of your own planetary wheel, observing the progress of a friend on the rim of another wheel in the same system. Assuming different rates of travel, to watch that friend is sometimes to see an apparent reversal in his course. This loop of retrogression, as it's known, stems from the fact that you the observer are yourself a passenger on a body in motion.

All things in the Builder's creation serve not only their own functions as objects but also as lessons for his children. Thus does the Wheel and Axle teach us that to move forward is sometimes to appear, perhaps even to ourselves, to slide back.

There are plenty of sources that list the distances of various stars from Earth, but does anyone know of a source for looking up the distances of stars from one another? If not, I may have to dust off some spherical geometry that I would rather leave in its rusty box.

Specifically, I need to know the distance between Tau Ceti and Van Maanen's Star.

"Hello, and what seems to be the problem with your 1-800-FLOWERS online order, sir?"

"Well, I'm not really sure. All the voicemail told me was there was a problem and I should call."

"All right, sir, I can help you with that. Let me just look up your order. One moment."

"Thank you."

"Okay, sir, um, well, it seems the problem is that the florist can't print that word on the card."

"Ah, makes sense, okay, I see."

"Is there, um, something we can change that word to, sir?"

"Well, how about just 'mothers'? Will that work?"

"Yes, sir, 'mothers' will work fine. Let me just make that change. We'll get this back to the florist and get your order out right away."

"Thank you very much."

"Thank you for using 1-800-FLOWERS, sir. Have a nice day."

No, Ella is not awaiting a date with the hangman. This is not a gallows but the new deck that's being constructed on the back of our house, and Ella is eagerly awaiting the day when the second level is complete and the back door out of our kitchen no longer opens on empty air.

Right now, Ella is mightily confused as to why we don't let her out the back door anymore.

Thanks to Netflix, I've been enjoying a steady diet of The Wire, an episode a day on average—um, sometimes two. I'm nearly to the end of the third season. I watched Episode 10 last Thursday. The fifth disc of Season Three, with the last two episodes, was supposed to arrive Friday.

Friday's mail came and went. No DVD.

I didn't start to panic until Saturday's mail had also come and gone with no sign of my re-up. Trembling a little, I logged into Netflix to report the disc lost. Netflix told me that occasional delays are to be expected, and that I would not be able to report the disc missing and request a replacement until Monday.

I began to sweat.

The first thing I did Monday morning, even though the day's mail was still hours away, was to at last report Season Three Disc Five of The Wire missing and to request a replacement. Not an hour later I received email from Netflix telling me that they had just processed the return of the disc I had reported missing.

By now, spots were swimming before my eyes. They had received the missing disc?! The only scenario I could construct that could explain this is that the post office had somehow delivered the DVD on Friday to the wrong house, where that good citizen had recognized the error and straightaway put the disc back in the mail.

I started to feel nauseous. How close had my re-up come? Had it ended up miles away, or had it come to rest as close as next door?

I had to stop thinking about it. That way lay madness.

But hope still remained. Tuesday. There is a Netflix processing center right here in Chicago, which meant that at least I would have my replacement disc Tuesday. I only had to wait one more day. I wet my cracked lips as best I could with my blistered tongue. One more day.

I soon received email confirmation that my re-up had indeed shipped. It would arrive ... what? What the fuck? Wednesday? Why are you busting my fucking balls with this Wednesday shit, Netflix? That's no way to fucking do business! Wednesday?

Sorry, pal. Wednesday's the best we can do. Veteran's Day, you know. No mail.

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