Escape Pod Flash: Tired
Published by worldsoftomorrow on 15 Jun 2009 at 12:01 am.
Discuss on the forums.
Filed under Flash, Podcasts, Rated PG.
By Michael Bishop
Read by John Meagher
One morning, Gordon Pointer received an e-message from the left-front Goodstone tire on his old Callisto sedan. (He had bought the car used over a decade ago and retrofitted it for the intelligent interstates of the Piedmont metrosprawl.) Gordon abhorred palmflips, infraspecs, logomaniacs, microserfs, lapcops, and digital Kleenex, but he lived at the computerminal in his Callisto, journeying between office foci to talk with other human fossils like himself. He did not quail before occasional sitreps from his lead tire.
Rated PG for a worryingly low miles per gallon
13 Comments to ‘Escape Pod Flash: Tired’:
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Stumo on 15 Jun 2009 at 6:27 am: 1
I’m not sure I got the ending - anyone able to explain?
Ken_K on 16 Jun 2009 at 9:16 pm: 2
How depressing. The thought that inanimate products are gonna start bitching about things soon that it is. Ick.
Zorag on 17 Jun 2009 at 8:56 am: 3
Another piece about smart machinery.
Amateurish, at best.
Capitalism is bad, environmentalism is good. This is your future because the Evil Rich rule the world.
Brave Space Monkey on 17 Jun 2009 at 2:54 pm: 4
The tire holding the garden was Adam - the nice tire. He loved it so much that he keep it - used as a container for the garden.
I keep my first iPod, for no other reason that it was a great little music player and put up with a lot of abuse. I’m now using a iPhone and have giving away a shuffle and a nano… but I keep the old iPod… with it black and white screen and click wheel interface… I don’t use it but I keep it…
scatterbrain on 17 Jun 2009 at 3:52 pm: 5
Why must everything be upgraded with intelligence? We’ve seen sentient tires, cars, reefs, toothbrushes, boats, ducks, bears, goats, rocks, and even grass! When will the likes of Bishop and Di Filipo finally realise I don’t want an argument with my coffe mug over why it’s got a chip in?
mickeyd on 18 Jun 2009 at 10:08 pm: 6
Come on, you guys, lighten up! It’s supposed to be funny, and it is. It’s not an indictment against consumerism as much as a simple story of one common man’s reaction to one aspect of his ever-increasingly technology-filled world. And a note to Stumo, you might not know of the practice in the rural South of making used tires as flower beds. That would explain the ending.
Ken_K on 20 Jun 2009 at 1:44 pm: 7
scatterbrain:”I don’t want an argument with my coffe mug over why it’s got a chip in?”
You are right about that. A faulty sensor dinging all the time telling me my door was open, (when it wasn’t) made me want to crash my car into a tree just to make it STFU.
Anony on 21 Jun 2009 at 5:34 am: 8
The ending could go either way: it could be adam growing flowers or it could be that he ‘ended’ all four and found uses for them that wouldnt involve jailtime.
Are re-treads so expensive?
MasterThief on 22 Jun 2009 at 10:17 pm: 9
Please do not anthropomorphize the automata.
Vance M. on 26 Jun 2009 at 6:47 pm: 10
Interesting story, concept and execution. As the pieces of his car became more annoying, I wanted the protagonist to set the gas tank on fire and walk away. (maybe I’ve been watching too many Michael Bay movies.)
J on 2 Jul 2009 at 5:21 pm: 11
i found this one to be pleasantly amusing, and far less irritating than the toothbrush one.
also, even one michael bay movie is too many.
by a long shot.
Bob Mottram (motters) 's status on Sunday, 26-Jul-09 19:34:09 UTC - Identi.ca on 26 Jul 2009 at 3:34 pm: 12
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Gwen on 17 Aug 2009 at 7:33 pm: 13
This story made me smile.