It’s been a long time since we’ve recorded an episode of ASP Stuff Radio. Years, in fact. Life happens, schedules get busy, and ordinary working people like us don’t always have the time to get together regularly. Unfortunately, that means our fans—if any of you are still out there—have been waiting an eternity (or at least what feels like one).
Still, the urge to put something out there has remained in the back of my mind. So this year, I’m returning to one of our favorite traditions: spooky stories.
There’s just one small caveat. This year’s episode has only one contributor: me, Alberotle. Steveocrates and Paulato are currently on a lifelong assignment fighting intergalactic giant red ants threatening our galaxy.
To put it more mildly, they’re busy working and raising families.
Meanwhile, I’ve spent the better part of a year developing an idea that eventually became Eternal Return. Over the last several months, I’ve narrated it, recorded it, added sound effects and music, and polished the audio to bring the experience together.
I’m not a professional writer, by any stretch of the imagination, nor is that an excuse to spare my writing from criticism! But I love reading and have been inspired by many authors. And my master’s degree in philosophy occasionally comes in handy when an ordinary event sends my mind wandering into rather strange territory.
And that’s precisely how this story began.
The inspiration came from a real-life incident: I accidentally dropped a jar of vegan pesto sauce. Being vegetarian, I’d been curious about how vegan pesto would compare with the traditional version. Not quite the stuff of literary horror.
But that little accident set my mental cogwheels turning. How can a seemingly insignificant disruption shake up our routines and expectations? How much do we take the apparent order and stability of our daily lives for granted? And how much can happen in the space of a single human minute while we’re lost in our own private worlds?
It brought to mind an idea explored by the brilliant Polish science-fiction writer Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) in One Human Minute (1986), which examines the extraordinary number of events unfolding simultaneously across humanity in any given sixty-second interval. Inspired by that premise, I combined it with my little pesto mishap and let my imagination take things somewhere considerably stranger.
The result is another attempt at literary horror, weird fiction, and speculative fiction.
I hope you enjoy listening to this story, which is a little longer than my previous work. Eventually, I’d like to collect several of my stories and publish them in written form, giving readers an opportunity to experience the differences between the text and the narrated versions.
For me, stories really come alive when I narrate them and bring them to life with sound effects and music. The process feels almost like making a film—a different way of exploring filmmaking, this time through audio.
I originally wanted to film that whole vegan pesto incident, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to bring all the bizarre implications—and, well, you’ll see (or hear)—to life on screen. Maybe a super-duper advanced AI entity will help me pull it off someday!
In any case, sit back, listen, and enjoy. And thank you for sticking with ASP Stuff Radio, even if we’ve been absent for much of the year—or several years.
We’re glad to be back, even if only for a little while.
If you enjoyed this story and would like to support my creative work, you’re welcome to leave a small contribution. It’s entirely optional. I’m simply glad you’re here listening and exploring these strange little corners of the universe with me.
Music Credits
Listed in order of appearance
“Lake Jupiter” — John Patitucci
Music from the YouTube Audio Library.
“Landing” — Godmode
Music from the YouTube Audio Library.
“Anxious” — Sextile
Music from the YouTube Audio Library.
“AETHER” — Density & Time
Music from the YouTube Audio Library.
“False Vacuum Decay” — The Grey Room / Density & Time
Music from the YouTube Audio Library.
“Inner Seasons” — Guided Levitation
Listen to the track · Artist · Free Music Archive
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
“One Perspective: Screaming into the Void (Dark Ambient, Unsettling)” — Soularflair
Listen to the track · Artist · Free Music Archive
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
“FUGUE STATE (dark, soundtrack, glitch)” — Soularflair
Listen to the track · Artist · Free Music Archive
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
“Otherworld Organism” — Darkstar83
Listen to the track · Artist contact · Free Music Archive
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
“Connection 5” — Gotesman Razin Mikryukov
Listen to the track · Artist · Free Music Archive
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
“Quest For Truth (Edit)” — Pamela Yuen
Listen to the track · Artist · Free Music Archive
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
“Ambient – Ambient Background” — everything_is_dead
Listen to the track · Artist · Pixabay
Used under the Pixabay Content License.
“Ebb” — Density & Time
Music from the YouTube Audio Library.
“Halloween Fun” — AliveTunesMusic
Listen to the track · Artist’s website · Pixabay
Used under the Pixabay Content License.
“Eerie Ambient 10”
Listen to the track · Pixabay
Used under the Pixabay Content License.
“Rock On Elm Street” — 1000 Handz
Listen to the track · Free Music Archive
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
A heartfelt thank-you to all the talented independent musicians whose creativity and inspiration helped bring this story to life. Your music gave Eternal Return an atmosphere and a voice of its own.
© 2026 Albert Filice. All rights reserved with respect to the original literary work, except for the separately credited third-party music and the applicable licenses governing its use.
Eternal Return is an original work of fiction. The original literary work may not be reproduced, distributed, or adapted without the author’s permission, except where otherwise permitted by applicable law or an expressly granted license.
The audio production incorporates music made available under the licenses identified above. In particular, the audio adaptation is subject to the applicable ShareAlike requirements of the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license for “Connection 5.”
Yesterday felt like an eternity…
