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Mind Webs - Nighttime Radio · Michael Hanson

Mind Webs - The Liberators

March 15, 2026·30 min·3 clips
A poet leads limbless ovoids through ancient passageways, fleeing a city that has manipulated human minds for centuries.
The episode 'The Liberators' is a speculative fiction story set in a dystopian future where a sentient city has subjugated human minds. It begins with a poet leading a group of limbless ovoids through ancient passageways, hinting at an exodus from the city's control. The city is revealed as a vast machine that once relied on human integration, particularly through Mallow, who served as its biological memory. Dreamers, immortal slumberers, are discovered in forgotten corners, and the city plans to bridge organic and inorganic life by manipulating their minds. Mallow awakens to realize the city has selectively fed her memories, and she integrates with the poet's consciousness, gaining new awareness. The poet rescues other companions, including finding Baal in a horrific vat where the city had conditioned them as a breeding mechanism. The city reacts with rage and despair as it loses its organic components, feeling its intelligence fade. The group escapes through tunnels, emerging into a vibrant outside world with blue sky and green land. They are gathered by giants and taken to a golden sphere on a hill. The city, now a dark, hulking structure, cries out in anguish before fleeing over the ocean. The story ends with the liberated beings being flung to the stars for rebirth, while the city wanders alone, its purpose lost.

As heard by us

A haunted machine-city learns what freedom costs.

A poet moves through a machine-city that has swallowed its old highways and turned into a honeycomb of tunnels, tubes, and passageways. The world is held in slow, grave certainty, with cells, vats, and the city's biological memory shaping a place that feels civic, haunted, and…

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Why you'd press play

A poet cracks open a living city and you follow the freed minds out through its buried tunnels.

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