"They destroyed my brain, too"

“Connie, Maybe,” Paul E. Martens’ short story about alien abduction, human identity, brainwashing, and conspiracy, is laugh-out-loud hilarious on its own. But Wichita Rutherford’s podcast reading of it makes it an over-the-top classic. Here’s how it starts:

Conrad McManus claimed he was kidnapped by aliens and replaced by an exact duplicate of himself.

But, Connie, we said, that doesn’t make sense. If you were a duplicate you wouldn’t say a thing like that.

Connie shook his head. “The aliens destroyed my body while they were doing their tests and experiments and what not and they had to make a new one so no one would know about them.”

So they destroyed everything, we asked, except your brain?

“No,” he said. “They destroyed my brain, too.”

“Connie, Maybe” is a hoot. Escape Pod offered it a few weeks ago and I just caught up with it. I urge you to listen to it right here.