Escape Pod 239: A Programmatic Approach to Perfect Happiness
A Programmatic Approach to Perfect Happiness
By Tim Pratt
My step-daughter Wynter, who is regrettably prejudiced against robots and those who love us, comes floating through the door in a metaphorical cloud of glitter instead of her customary figurative cloud of gloom. She enters the kitchen, rises up on the toes of her black spike-heeled boots, wraps her leather-braceleted arms around my neck, and places a kiss on my cheek, leaving behind a smear of black lipstick on my artificial skin and a whiff of white make-up in my artificial nose.
“Hi Kirby,” she says, voice all bubbles and light, when normally she would never deign to utter my personal designation.
“Is Moms around? Haven’t talked to her in a million.”
I know right away that Wynter has been infected.
About the Author
Tim Pratt
Tim Melody Pratt (genderfluid, any pronouns) lives in Berkeley, California with spouse Heather Shaw and their son River.
Pratt’s fiction and poetry have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Erotica, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, Asimov’s, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Subterranean, and Clarkesworld, among many other places (for complete details, see the bibliography). She writes a new story every month for patrons at Patreon: www.patreon.com/timpratt
About the Narrator
Serah Eley
Serah Eley is a chaos spirit who first appeared in 2013, from the right cerebral hemisphere of a former podcaster named Steve Eley. Best known as the founding editor and host of Escape Pod, with the famous signoff “Have Fun,” Steve realized he was having more fun as Serah and gave her the body for transition and general mayhem. Now much prettier than Steve and at least seventy percent weirder, Serah lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her spouse Sadi and collects stories too fantastic to be fiction. If you ask nicely she may even tell some of them. Very nicely.
