"People Used To Die Every Day" by Chad Baker
A young man is caught in a lie to his partner; he has been illegally sleeping at night.
“Short Stories For Long Discussions…”
Mission Statement: After Dinner Conversation is an independent, nonprofit literary magazine that publishes philosophical short stories to encourage discussions with friends, family, and students.
Letter from Tina
Hello everyone,
Do you remember getting the May 2023 ebook for FREE? Well, as they say in the infomercials—
BUT WAIT, there’s more!
I discovered a WEIRD HIDDEN DEAL for Amazon’s audiobooks.
As you may know, you can listen to ADC stories through Amazon’s new AI narration, and you can speed up or slow down the audio, as I demonstrate in this video:
What you may not know is that once you buy the ebook on Amazon, you can then get the audiobook as an add-on at a substantial discount. Sometimes the combination of the ebook and the add-on “Whispersync for Voice” (audiobook) is cheaper than buying the audiobook alone.
That’s the case with the ADC May issue. The bottom line:
Audiobook alone = $6
Audiobook + ebook, synced = $2
Weird, I know.
And no, there’s no difference in the audio quality. It’s the same audio. Another benefit is that the formats stay in sync, which means you can go from reading to listening without losing your place. I haven’t tried it myself (I prefer print), but I found a YouTube video for you if you want to find out more. Click here for video.
HOW, Tina, do I get this deal?
First you go to the Amazon website (click image below), you’ll see something that looks a bit like this (depending on whether you’re logged in and so forth):
The relevant part looks like this:
At the bottom of the image above it says “Buy with 1-Click”. Don’t click that! That’s NOT the deal!
First you need to “buy” the Kindle ebook for free. You’ll see why once you click on the box that says, “Kindle”. Now you should be seeing this:
If you look carefully, you’ll see either “Add an audiobook with virtual voice for 1.99” (above) or “Whispersync for Voice” (below), depending on whether you’ve already downloaded the ebook. It will be somewhat hidden, so look hard.
NOW you can click on “Buy now with 1-Click” to get your audiobook for $1.99.
How nuts is that?! When do you ever get more for less? Cool trick, right? Maybe I just saved you some $$$ on audiobooks?
You’re welcome.
Now click the image below and go get yourself a $2 audiobook!:
And as always, if you enjoy these stories, support writers, and support what we do, you can always subscribe to our monthly magazine via our website (digital or print), or via substack.
Tina
Take the poll for this week’s story, “People Used to Die Every Day”:
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"People Used To Die Every Day" by Chad Baker
Scroll down for audio.
“Okay, so tell me the truth: why couldn’t I get a hold of you last night?”
Samir folds his arms and stares at Peter across the little round table in the bar. “I know you have class on Tuesday nights, but you get breaks. And it’s not like you couldn’t answer a text from class,” Samir says. He has not yet taken one sip of his martini. “So. Where were you really?”
Peter feels a red rush of shame. He never meant to lie to Samir. At first, he rationalized not telling his boyfriend on the basis that he was just trying it out, experimenting, curious. Maybe he wouldn’t even like it. Maybe he’d only do it once—in which case, it would hardly be worth mentioning, right? But he had done it eight times. Eight wasn’t experimenting. He did like it. And he didn’t want to stop. So now it was time to come clean.
Peter glances at the tables near them. It’s just before midnight, and the gastropub is filling up with Chicago’s young professional crowd: carefully tousled hair, sleek bodies, explosive laughs. On weekdays, this bar runs a happy hour special from 11:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. to bring in the after-work crowd just off their second shifts. Samir likes this place, but it makes Peter’s head swim. His eyes keep getting pulled away by the 12 screens affixed above the bar and on the walls, which show a football game, music videos, a series of amateur clips in which people try to do a backflip and fall down.
Peter doesn’t think anyone is near enough to hear them, but still he lowers his voice and hunches over the shiny, faux-onyx tabletop so that his nose is almost in his beer stein when he says: “I was sleeping.”
Samir’s stony face gives no reaction except for a hot flare behind his dark eyes—or maybe Peter imagines that. After almost a year together, he is still not very good at reading Samir.
“Look, I wanted to tell you, but I—”
Samir holds up a palm to stop him. “I’m not going to talk about this here. Let’s just finish our drinks.”
They drink in their painful bubble of silence, sealed off from the commotion of the bar. Peter has never downed a beer faster.
* * *
When the revolving door spits them out, Samir marches down the avenue of shops and restaurants with long, quick strides. Peter has to jog to catch up. His health implant pings his phone to tell him he’s reached .07 BAC and it will now release an alcohol antagonist. He had drank two swift beers before he came to the bar, trying to muster the courage to confess.
“Was it the first time?” Samir asks.
“No.”
Samir opens his mouth but closes it again when he spots the couple with a toddler approaching on the tree-lined sidewalk. The little girl picks up burnt red maple leaves that just began to fall this week, collecting them. The incandescent street lamps bathe everything in a metallic white (they redid the lamps on this street last month, upping the wattage even more). Samir turns down a less busy side street. “How many times?”
“Eight.”
“Oh God, Peter.” There’s pity in his voice. Peter had been prepared for anger, surprise, maybe mild concern—but this, Samir’s sad embarrassment for Peter, is much worse.
“It’s not that big a deal. A lot of people do it.”
“It’s not that big a deal. A lot of people do it.”
“A lot of losers. Fat, unemployed losers who live with their parents and—” He stops, puts a thumb and forefinger to his closed eyes. “Which is not you, obviously. That’s not what I mean. I just—I never expected this from you.”
They pass one block of two-story homes and orange-leafed oaks in silence. Living room windows frame families and couples on couches, awash in the flicker of screens. Peter breathes in the dry, crinkly scent of autumn.
“You’ve never been curious?” Peter asks, once he can’t bear the quiet any longer. “What it’s like?”
“No more than I’m curious about what’s it like to have tuberculosis or shit in an outhouse. We’ve solved those problems. Why would I want to go back?”
Samir and Peter are both in their late twenties, so they were born years after the neuro-pharmacological team at China’s Tsinghua University first synthesized somnephrine and discovered that, in combination with a cocktail of other stimulants, proteins, and reuptake inhibitors, it will do everything for the human brain and body that sleep used to do. At first, the compound had to be taken daily, in pill form, but after the rise of permanent health implants, somnephrine became a mandatory ingredient in everyone’s monthly cartridge.
“So your new leadership class,” Samir says. “These Tuesdays and Thursdays for the past month—that was all bullshit?”
“I’m sorry. I needed, you know, a reason. That we weren’t hanging out those nights.”
“That’s what you’re doing instead of actually taking a PCC?” Samir, like most people in the couple’s circle of ambitious twentysomethings, is perpetually in a Professional Certification Course. He’s racked up five different PCs.
“It’s not like I’m being irresponsible about it. I haven’t missed work or anything. It’s not affecting my life.”
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