LeVar Burton Reads · LeVar Burton and Stitcher

"She Builds Quick Machines" by Lyndsie Manusos

April 23, 2024·39 min·2 clips

Hex's parents built the goggles fused to her face — she remembers screaming as they held her down to install them — and inside one lens she keeps a glass negative photograph of them she can only look at for a moment.

LeVar begins with goodbye close enough to touch. He brings listeners into the last season's closing stretch and names a May 6 Instagram Live that is half celebration, half farewell. The story itself comes in sideways, with muddied waters and heroes, villains, robots, and humans refusing to stay in their assigned lanes. Hex carries the mess in her body. Her implanted goggles are injury and inheritance at once, tied to parents whose work and sacrifice sit behind glass. Memory is not background for her. It is part of the toolkit. A hidden negative of her parents rests among her lenses, and the feeling around it is so raw that even filtered tears seem risky. The physical details do the heavy lifting: brittle hands, rust, chemicals, willpower. Grief here feels like something Hex has to maintain every day. Then the room changes. She starts the electric chemist and eats a ripe tomato like an apple, letting the juice run. Beach feels far away on purpose, healing and self sustaining, nowhere near the bright, metal rich cities or busy ports of commerce. Hex likes the edge of things. Neighbors make more sense to her than politicians. Sea cattle make more sense than war. Machines make more sense than grand causes. But trouble has a way of finding useful people. Dido may come back for retribution. The nameless one may follow him, or may want something from Hex. Being one of the best quick mechanics in the surrounding systems leaves her useful, watched, and hard to leave in peace. LeVar closes with thanks to the author, points listeners toward her coming novella, and lets the credits hold the season's goodbye a little longer.

As heard by us

A quick-mechanics story on a healing planet, where uncertain loyalties and blurred identities keep the tension close.

"She Builds Quick Machines" follows Hex, one of the strongest quick mechanics on Beach, a self-sustaining planet still in the midst of recovery.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A quiet sci-fi listen about a mechanic whose hands know more than the politics around her.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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