"She Builds Quick Machines" by Lyndsie Manusos

Good to go, Johanna. And a winner! And a winner! Oh, oh, oh, oh!

It's not a winner! No one has seen it. Let's see if the winner is the winner. Yes, the winner is.

Very clear, no one has a winner. No one has a winner. No one has a winner. The winner is a winner.

Hey, I'll be able to get you out of your new places. BILTEEMO Well, LeVar here. This is my last season of LeVar Burton Reads,

and you are listening to one of the very final episodes. And I want to celebrate the 13 amazing seasons of the podcast with you. So find me on Instagram Live on Monday, May 6th, from 6.30 to 8 p.m. Pacific Time. I'll be answering some questions, maybe one from you,

and I might have some guests pop in as well. Find me on Instagram at LeVar.Burton Hit follow and then tune in on Monday, May 6th From 6.30 to 8pm Pacific Time

To help me celebrate LeVar Burton Reads And thank you for everything Hi, I'm LeVar Burton And this is LeVar Burton Reads

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. You got the good guys, the bad guys, you got heroes, you got villains. sometimes the story makes it pretty clear who's who, and sometimes the story doesn't.

In today's story, there are a lot of muddied waters. We don't know who we should be rooting for, really. We don't even know who's robot and who's human, or what kind of conflict is going on, exactly. We zoom in on one being eking out a living, taking pride in the work she does every day. She's an exceptional tradesperson, someone who specializes in creating quick machines

tailored to very specific purposes. If you've got the coin, Hex can build you what you need in her workshop, and probably in less than an hour or two. And we, the readers or listeners, are sequestered in that workshop with her, given only enough details to get by. This was a really fun read by the author Lindsay Manousos, and it was first published in the anthology Robotic Ambitions, Tales of Mechanical Sentience.

Love that title. Published by Apex Books. Now, Lindsay's writing has appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, the magazine of fantasy and science fiction, and The Deadlands, among other publications. And she's got a novella with Psychopomp coming out this summer entitled From These Dark Abodes.

If you're interested in a content advisory for this story, you will certainly find one in the episode description. And now, if you're ready, let's take a deep breath. Mmm. And begin.

She builds Quick Machines by Lindsay Manusos. In the groove of the moment, her hands moved on their own accord, quicker than her mind, knowing by feel alone if a cog was in the right place, if a screw was tight.

To the common eye, her hands were a blur of movement, Pieces on the work table appeared or disappeared. A whiff of air and a drawer opened and shut. A common ear would hear a sound, yet their eyes would be unable to catch the sleight of hand.

Every few seconds there was a click, a lens dropped or flicked up from her goggles to zoom in or out of the contraption. She knew what she needed to build. One hour later. Done. An easy project.

A neighbor needed a small surveillance box to see what animal was stealing her tomatoes from the garden on her windowsill. Tomatoes of this mutated variety, ginormous, knotted, and juicy, were precious on beach. a world of boxed and stacked homes built from beach houses of years past. There was water at ground level,

sucked up through pipes to be filtered and used, recycled and reused. Long ago, after a century of over-terraforming, the actual beach was now an hour inland at least. Her neighbor would pay her in two bulbous newly grown tomatoes,

in exchange for the box. She sat back and inspected her work. Not sleek or shiny. Quick machines weren't built for beauty,

though they were always beautiful to her. No one bought her work for its aesthetic pleasure. They bought it because it was built quick. And it worked.

Someone knocked on the door. Enter, she said. A figure walked in, tall and as boxy as the living units stacked below and above. Name and pronouns, she said, wasting no time with small talk or pleasantries.

Dido, he works, he said. He took out a stack of banknotes from a pocket of his jacket. A lens lowered and she was able to count the pockets of his jacket She'd never seen a jacket with so many

Seconds passed She counted 27 I need a gun, he said Rapid fire sounds as her lenses all clicked up

Until Dido could see her eyes behind the goggles She saw his own eyes widened eyes without goggles fused to his skin. Her eyes were no doubt enormous to him.

She let him see how she saw him, as if she might look through him. Don't do those, she said. You build quick machines, he said.

Anything but those, she said. She did not pretend to be a beacon of morality. She made quick machines that did their own brand of harm, but guns she would not do. She watched him bite his lip, his gaze searching around her front office.

There was a curtain behind her that led to her sleeping cot and a small kitchenette. The office had the work table in which she sat, plus stacks and stacks of random equipment. Gizmos, screws, and cogs of every shape. A bin of microchips she'd salvaged, among other things.

It was chaos. It was hers. What about defensive equipment? He asked.

Shields and such. To defend against? She prompted. He shrugged, smiling meekly.

Capture? Probably running from a bounty. Many often did. It was none of her business. I can whip up something, she said. Come back in two hours.

That fast? he said, clearly surprised. Usually quick mechanics take a day. Most do, she said, but eyed the banknotes he held. A week's profit, and she hadn't bought new gloves in months.

There were holes already in her palm and on the pads of her fingertips. I'm not most. Dido laughed, then placed the stack on the work table. That's what I'd heard.

Go to beach, they said. Find the one with the goggles. I have a name, she said. Her ego pleased but irritated that people hadn't seemed to pass that particular fact along.