PETER WAS FINISHING THE final few minutes of his podcast.

“Okay folks, we are wrapping it up on this magnificent last Wednesday of August 2037. Next week, we plan to take a deeper view at the recent discoveries of what appear to be three new Dyson spheres. Although we covered that topic in previous podcasts, a special guest speaker will be in town from SETI, and she plans on stopping by to provide insights on what they’re finding at SETI as well as any new evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. I’m sure our listeners are hoping it’s not just another cloud of dust circling a star, or the thousandth example of plant biomarkers from a planet trillions of miles away.”

Molli gave the cut sign, always a signal to stop blabbing so much and conclude the podcast. She smiled, exposing small, perfect teeth behind her thick, uncolored lips.

“Molli is indicating that I exfoliated my Broca’s area too much today. Until next time, keep uncovering science, visit our website, and stay in touch. Goodbye.”

She removed her headset. “I didn’t want to tell you this, but I just received a text from Doctor Lois at SETI. Something came up, and she had to cancel her trip to Boston. She’ll try to make it when in the city at a future date.”

Peter peered at Molli sitting across from him. “Hey, I get what’s different. You cut your hair this week, right?”

Molli stroked her dark, shoulder-length hair.

“It was too much hassle. You know I don’t like it that long. Todd wasn’t thrilled, either, since he prefers it long. But I said ‘screw it, boys’ because I do as I please, unhindered. This podcast I tolerate for fun is one thing. My other two jobs are another. There’s no time for extraneous crap in my life, as if there ever was. Hey, did you catch what I said? Doctor Lois from SETI can’t make it.”

Peter arched back in his swivel chair. ‘Rich, Corinthian leather’ he’d proclaim on his podcast, knowing no listener would understand a bad joke from a 1970s serial.

“Crapola for breakfast! Means we need to find someone else. I’m glad that’s your job. By the way, what are you and Toddy-boy doing this weekend? Ball game?”

Molli pulled out the drawer to stow away her headset and other equipment scattered on her desk.

“Nothing special. He’s out of town somewhere.”

“Somewhere? He travels a lot without you.”

“None of your business, sir.”

“By all means.”

She closed the drawer and grasped the red spiral notepad used as an analog form of notetaking.

“But seriously, I have too much to do. I’m front-desking at the bakery on Saturday, and I’ll be too tired. I need Sunday by myself to rest.”

Squinting at one of the two monitors in front of her, she added, “Oh, and you’ll love this! I forgot to mention the other thing that happened while you were flapping away.”

Head down and checking on listener feedback, Peter raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”

“The obelisk.”

“Obelisk?” he replied.

“Yeah. Come over here or go to your national feeds. I imagine it’s all over the news.”

Peter rushed around his desk to peer at her screen.

“What the hell’s the obelisk? Something Egyptian?”

“No. Take a gander.”

“Hello, Houston! An object from outer space? Too much. Can you stay a few minutes longer and watch the news with me? We might want to leverage this for next week’s podcast, albeit without our esteemed doctor Lois.”

Molli nodded in acknowledgement and unrolled her larger vidscreen. She always rolled it up during the podcast to avoid the magnetic draw of video feeds that distracted her from the task at hand. It was the essential function of video that bothered her so much about her previous work managing production at a Boston TV station. ‘The worst job to waste for a graduate of Penn,’ she’d tell friends. The broadcast business was long a dying breed, only coming to life with occasional big news events. There were now so many customized feeds and methods of accessing them, the broadcast industry had devolved to one where too much effort competed for too few eyeballs.

Plopping back in his chair, Peter unrolled his vidscreen and commanded it to activate.

“CNN,” he commanded, and the screen divided into four different feeds. “Feed four,” he continued, and the screen responded by focusing on the Breaking News story.

They looked at each other in disbelief, and Peter slammed the desk with his fist. “Holy crap exciting!”

The reporter was halfway through the story. “The experience was similar to the Russian event in 2013 known as the Chelyabinsk Meteor. Residents in the surrounding towns north and east of Prince Albert, including Smeaton, Choiceland, and Love, heard the blast and saw the vapor trail. We helicoptered to Smeaton an hour ago, where most windows are shattered. It’s like a tornado hit the town, but without the tornado.”

“Any casualties?” the anchor inquired.

The reporter grinned. “Not that we know of, beyond a cow or two. The area where it landed is remote, even for Saskatchewan. A few farms are out there, which is where these kids came from. They were first on the scene and found what’s being reported as the ‘obelisk,’ a long, pyramidal object. Apparently, they told authorities it was easy to locate since it skated parallel to the ground for some distance, then came to rest in a huge pile of mud.”

The feed cut back to the anchor desk. “How big was it, and what else do we know?”

“Sorry, this is all we can ascertain at this stage since the Mounties cordoned-off an extensive area north of these towns. We’re hoping to interview the kids or families who found it, or at least those who saw it streak across the sky. We’ll keep in touch as we gather more information.”

“Mute!” Peter looked at Molli whose eyes were wide open. “Doctor Lois? What are the odds she’d skip-out on her whole trip? She was coming to Boston for an awards ceremony, and now her cancellation is making sense. Can you believe this story?”

Molli tilted her head and clapped her hands. “Peter, we’ve seen so much weird, crazy-ass, never-dreamed-of tech in the last decade. It’s all going too fast for my senses, and I can’t say anything is impossible at this point. I mean, it only takes visiting the streets of Cambridge, maybe especially here, to witness the transhuman, posthuman, and sometimes sub-human or hyper-human-animal-plant, daily freak show. Cast your eyes on some of these clippers, chippers, and gripper mechs walking or hobbling around the streets. The whole freaking world is in disarray right now with tech gone off the deep end, and I mean the unimaginable deep end.”

She rose from her chair and slowly stretched her back. “You couldn’t see this coming, not a decade ago. It only took the last five years, and then it cascaded into the Rocky Horror realm of disbelief. Now nothing surprises Miss Molli. Genetic mutants, purple chlorophyll-skinned teens, robotic bone augmentations, sentient AI, and now we add alien obelisks to the mix. Throw the whole bunch in the pot and raise the flame to boil. Humanity’s a wonderful, luscious, hell-hole concoction right now, some of which is arguably not humanity.”

“Hey, hey, hey. It’s not that negative. I mean, look at Ears for a great example of a clipper. I love the guy, and you love the guy. He’s hypersensitive, yes, but pure essence of human, despite or perhaps due to his geedee tech.”

She nodded in agreement. “I know, but the bad seems to outweigh the good. I think about what it was like years ago when parents were not happy about their kids getting tattoos or piercings. What’s here now, though, goes far beyond tattoos and what could have been conceived. Can you imagine a great Bostonian like Ben Franklin plopping his butt down in this fantastic mess of a world?”

Although they had been working together for a while, Peter was unaccustomed to being serious with Molli and had never delved much into what she thought about the pace of change.

“Good old Ben. That’d make a great book. A Boston Yankee in the Summer Court of 2037 Harvard, or MIT for that matter. He’d love the science part, I’m sure, being an experimenter first class.”

“I’m not so sure. Think of the countless unlucky, off-target dregs hunkered underground and out of sight, or the radical semi-primate creatures at the edges of this overstretched canvas we roughly call humanity. Then there are the crazy things being seriously discussed like amending the Constitution to accommodate distinct classes of humans and hybrids. Our Founding Fathers never could have conceived of this in a psilocybin dream.”

“Come on,” he countered. “There’s always been a revolutionary twist in this town. Hey, that reminds me, can you stay a few more minutes?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“I’ve been thinking we need to change the podcast format and add a squirt of sriracha sauce. Ratings are trending in the wrong direction over the last two years, particularly the last few months, as we are painfully aware. I’m not sure if it’s due to other things going on in the world that compete for listeners, or maybe we’re simply not covering relevant trends.”

“You mean we should move from basic sciences to more of the applications, or should I say today’s distorted, freakish, and scary applications?”

Peter paced back and forth in the small space between the two podcast desks.

“That’s right. For example, we reviewed advances in gene drives and scroll, but that was at the deeper level of how it works versus actual applications and impacts on people.”

“You’ve seen what’s slithering out on the streets,” Molli objected. “I can’t conclude our listeners need us to go deep into those examples. Anyway, they’ve seen enough human oddity splattered across the media the last few years. Always pushing the edgiest and most outlandish crap to attract eyeballs and advertisers.”

Peter disagreed. “We know these other science podcast shows, though. What’s missing is the human story behind why people are doing what they’re doing. It could give the pod a good spin, something humanistic with added emotional draw.”

Molli cast an annoyed glance. “You’re more concerned for ratings and spin than the quality of the podcast? That doesn’t sound like the Peter I know. The big guy is going commercial and can’t separate himself from his podcast and the persona it creates to provide that little jolt of fame-related endorphins.”

She smiled, letting him know she was half-serious, half-joking.

“Of course,” he retorted, thumping his finger on the table, “I only graduated from Penn with multiple science majors under my belt, and you got that immensely impactful degree in Sociology. No way I can compete with the social implications guru, so I must defer to your wisdom. But seriously, my bones say to change the format. You always mention how your kung fu master corrects and changes your forms. I’m suggesting we change it up and get more current with the applications side versus the deeper science.”

Molli peered up at him, unsmiling but less perturbed. “I can’t argue with your last words there, sir. It’s possible, though unlikely given my extensive depth in Sociology, that I’m suffering from a limited perspective. I’ll meditate and see what falls into my mind. Speaking of which, how is your own meditation coming along?”

Peter leaned back and placed both hands atop his head. “It’s too hard, Molli. I cannot force my brain to shut off. I try to see this pool of calm water you rave about, but it never gets to a glassy surface. No way. My surface is always a raging waterfall, or I’m in a dinghy with sea waves crashing around me and no shark repellant.”

She laughed and brushed granola crumbs from her jeans. “I told you a million times to push through it. Mental drift is expected at every stage, but it gets more manageable the better disciplined you become. Also, stop looking at your screens and feeds before you’re ready to go to sleep, for God’s sake.”

“Yeah, I understand, but how do you keep this genius mind from pondering the options and possibilities in the universe? Do you suppose Einstein meditated? I doubt there’s any history of that, so I’m right there with great company.”

Molli started for the door, slipping back the chrome bolt lock that exited from their garage studio and into the house.

“I hate to admit you’re right, but it’s probably a good idea. I looked at the numbers as well and don’t care to lose more sponsors. If that happens, then the podcast likely disappears unless your poor parents desire to fund your post-college activities more than they already have.” She slipped out the door just as she delivered the final jab. “See you,” she giggled.