---

Freebooter

by Sylvie Althoff

The pirate bot was easy to miss. Squatting against a wall on the periphery of the Saint-Denis Heritage Market, it looked like an ordinary if outmoded HomeBot—a Gen One, the skinny bipedal kind that populated storage closets and garbage dumps the world over. But when backs were turned and no drones swooped overhead, Talia glimpsed a fluttering, holographic black flag flickering over the bot’s head.

Under bare chestnut branches and Haussmann roofs the color of smog, the vendors nearly outnumbered the shoppers. Steeped in the stifling late-winter air, the market felt as if it would give up the ghost any minute. Then again, it had been sliding into death since long before Talia fled here on a midnight flight from Texas…maybe even when she used to visit her grandparents as a young boy.

Ugh. For a world that was ending, this blasted planet sure was taking its time.

Usually Talia wouldn’t bother coming here—Marché de Merde, Talia called it under her breath—but when she got home from her last repair job, her grandmother hadn’t eaten for three days, turning up her nose at the perfectly good protein squares Talia had left for her. All that work fixing up Papa’s busted old HomeBot, and all it could do was watch Mémé starve to death and sweep the floor while Talia rushed her to the clinic. Now she had to waste her precious free time and last few cash chits on calf brains and prunes and whatever-the-hell vieux français shit.

“Avast, young miss.” The voice was tinny and ambiguously femme, slithering on a narrow band to Talia’s ear. “Forbidden prizes await ye on the seven seas. Secure data transfer, phones jailbroken, government waitlists, hardbot software. All at reasonable prices, me hearty.”

The bot slumped against the basilica that had been repurposed into a Komodo warehouse. The words were hokey, movie-pirate French mashed with borrowed English phrases. There was a mound of holographic jewels and coins at its feet, even an eyepatch and tricorn hat on its featureless gray head…at least, until an armored police transport trundled by and it all vanished.

Huffing, Talia shifted the bag full of produce on her shoulder. She might be stupid enough to keep on living, but she wasn’t that stupid. She read the message boards, saw the sleazy headlines on the street sheets. Pirate bots would steal her identity and empty her accounts, assuming they didn’t just bludgeon her over the head to strike a blow for robot rights or whatever.

“Government-grade HomeBot software packages,” the voice came again, this time in English. “Fully customizable and semi-autonomous. Romance and caretaking, medical, manuf–ry, Cordon Bl– cuisine, milspec combat pr—” Its voice clipped and fuzzed, evaporated as Talia retreated from the bot into the Métro entrance.

She shook her head in exasperation. The bot must have picked up some change in her heartbeat or breathing when it mentioned software. Switching to English, though…she had enough to worry about being clocked as trans without picking apart her body language to figure out what gave her away as American.

She stopped just before the blue winking light of the turnstile. Medical software, it said? Caretaking? A HomeBot that could perform CPR or run for help might be the difference between life and death for Mémé the next time Talia was away on an orbital platform job.

If Talia could get it installed on their bot, ancient as it was. If it wasn’t just a scam. And it probably was a scam, but she took the stairs back to the surface two at a time anyway.

She approached the pirate and cleared her throat. “Uh…avast? Or whatever?”

The bot’s sightless face stared at her, power indicator light in its chest a dull gray. It jerked a thumb toward the corner to its right.

Talia checked over both shoulders, then followed the pirate’s gesture. She ducked under the low sheet-metal awning, fairly certain she was about to end up as a bigoted if witty headline in Le Figaro.

The alley dead-ended in a chain-link fence. Talia almost left without seeing the bot in the shadow of a dumpster. It was identical to the one in the square except that it had a sharp piece of scrap metal in place of its right hand.

The bot inclined its head to Talia, its face blinking yellow as it gestured to the metal container at its side. “Ahoy, young miss. Come to claim a share in our booty?”

At last, the line was crossed into the realm of too ridiculous to bear. “Sorry, wrong alley,” she muttered, turning back the way she’d come.

“Just another lily-livered dog, then,” the bot grumbled in its flickering alto. “Content to have yer fortune pillaged by the scurvy owning class, spending yer life kissing the barnacles on his keel.”

She stopped. Gig work, no friends, illegal in her home country and dozens more, several lifetimes worth of debt. What did she have to lose, really? Besides, the owning class was looking particularly scurvy these days.

“What’ve you got in medical and caretaking that runs on an HB-T16 Rouge?” Talia asked, folding her arms. “Model year ‘55.”

The bot proffered a cracked screen, already loaded with software specs and prices. Talia grimaced at the maze of digits—give her anything with metal and grease and she could make it do a two-step, but software was another story.

Its sharpened prong jabbed at the screen. “Arr, the choicest booty’s found where—”

“Lose the goofy voice,” Talia commanded.

The bot processed this command for a few seconds, long enough for her to wonder if something was wrong with it. “This package has everything necessary to meet routine medical, caretaking, and home protection needs.”

Talia skimmed the catalog copy, which was cobbled together out of a dozen different languages and fonts. It looked like a quick install would teach Papa’s HomeBot how to monitor Mémé’s vitals, administer medication, communicate her needs to the nurses, even carry her down the stairs.

“Quality stuff,” Talia said, hoping she sounded knowledgeable. “And this is what, stolen from a hospital?”

“Stolen? Like hell. Liberated. Software wants to be free.” The bot pulled its skinny plastic arm across its torso in something like a salute.

Talia scowled. She’d never met a bot this theatrical, nor one that spoke in anything but the most calming and deferential tones. “You sound like one of those…those robot rights nuts.”

White light twinkled like laughter along the contours of the bot’s face. Talia didn’t think Gen-One HomeBots were capable of such a sophisticated gesture. “And what does that make you?”

“Excuse me?” Talia coughed.

“Sneaking down back alleys to wag a finger at an honest working robot? You’re either a cop or a bootlicking bourgeoise.”

“Excuse me?” Talia repeated. “I’m no bootlicker, and I’m definitely not a goddamn cop.”

“Sounds like something a cop would say.”

“Look, man, I repair heavy orbital machinery. Skilled labor, thankless hardcore sweat-and-grease stuff.”

The bot pulled away its screen with an echoey, metallic scoff. “So you labor for the benefit of your own oppressors.”

“I’m trans, for fuck’s sake!” Talia sputtered. “I’m a comrade getting fucked by the scurvy owning class, as much as anybody!”

“Sure. A comrade who thinks life-saving goods should be available only to the rich.”

“Life-saving goods? We’re still talking about pirated software, right?”

“This software saves thousands of lives a day in hospitals around the world.” The bot raised its hooked prosthetic in a stop gesture. “That’s enough dialectic for today. Are you buying or not, Mademoiselle?”

Talia’s fingers tingled from gripping the cash chits in her pocket. She bit her lip and inspected the menu one last time.

---

Talia blew hair out of her face, then gave the grimy bicycle chain another tug. If she could get off that one twisted link, she might finally be able to get the bike rideable again. When the chain still failed to split, she dropped the chain breaker on the floor with a clatter.

“Komodo trash,” she snorted, pulling in a lungful of dust and grease and old-people smell.

A soft beep came from over her shoulder. She whirled to see the installation bar on the HomeBot’s interface panel completely filled. The screen blinked, “Initializing, please wait,” then faded to black.

A coughing voice echoed from the next room, “Hé, fiston! Is that my tea?”

“No, Mémé. I’ll put the kettle on now. And stop calling me that, I’m a girl,” Talia muttered as she packed away the hopeless wreck of a bicycle, stashing it in a crowded corner of their century-old public-assistance HLM apartment.

That corner was where Talia had first found the dusty, immobile husk of the HomeBot, propping up a sewing machine and boxes of tax documents. The CPU had been intact, but it had taken weeks to get its charging port functional again, and even longer before all its limbs moved right. It was good to have a project to keep her busy; idleness only led to despair.

Talia glanced at the clock as she filled the kettle. “Mémé, it’s past time you had a walk.”

Mémé’s reply was an assertively negative croak.

Talia peered around the corner at the blanket-covered sofa. “Come on, I’ll finish this and we’ll go downstairs to check the mail together.”

“To hell with your walk,” the old woman groaned. “I’m not a damned dog.”

“Just out to the balcony and back, then. The nurse said you need to get up and move every two hours.”

“Later. I’m tired today.”

“She said you’d lose the leg if you don’t get the blood flowing.”

Her grandmother coughed violently and turned up the volume on the TV.

Rolling her eyes, Talia jabbed the throbbing white power button on the small of the bot’s back. The HomeBot’s rear port slid closed and the bot rose noisily to its feet. It stood nearly as tall as Talia, its sleek cobalt limbs embellished with a constellation of scrapes and dings.

“What’s your status?” Talia asked, looking the machine up and down. “Still functional, I hope?”

A glowing yellow line swept across the bot’s empty face. There was a stuttering sound deep in its chest, and Talia’s heart sank at the prospect of having just broken the damn thing.

“S-software installation is still ongoing. However, I am capable of rendering all available service w-while it completes,” the bot chirped in a femmey, mildly distorted tone.

Talia frowned. “What happened to your voice?”

“This custom vocal setting is included in the Komodo Lifestyle Robotics Luxury Caretaking Package. If you like, there are dozens of other voices and behavior protocols you can choose from.”

A low whistle sounded from the kettle as Mémé’s cough crescendoed in the other room.

“Later.” Talia looked the HomeBot over carefully. “Let’s give you a trial run. Can you bring my grandmother a cup of chamomile tea?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, well, do that. Now, s’il te plaît.”

The HomeBot complied, fetching the teabags from the cabinet and delicately carrying the beverage to Mémé on a tray.

“What’s this, now?” Mémé groused, her sagging cheeks shaking beneath her crocheted woolen hat. “You’re too slothful to fetch your grandmother a cup of tea yourself and I’m the lazy one?”

“You should enjoy this drink while it’s hot, Madame,” the HomeBot piped. “That would provide optimal benefits for your respiratory and digestive upset.”

Mémé sat up a bit straighter in fear as the bot sat the tray across her lap.

“Mon gars, you’re not really going to leave me alone with this thing again, are you? After the mess it made of this place while you left me to starve?”

“Don’t call me that, Mémé.” Talia sighed heavily. “I left because I need to work. If I don’t take these jobs, we won’t be able to afford groceries or medicine.”

The HomeBot craned its neck toward Talia from its position crouched beside the sofa. “Mademoiselle, my Komodo Professional Robotics Healthcare Package provides all training data required to take charge of your grandmother’s care, including medication management, physical therapy, transportation, dietary—”

“Transportation, that’s right! So you could escort her down to the park? Carry her, if need be?”

Mémé yelped, appalled. “Wicked child, if you let this ugly thing lay a claw on me…”

“I can, yes,” the HomeBot intoned. “I am also programmed to provide therapeutic bedside massage, with much the same benefits and significantly less risk of falling or exposure to environmental toxins.”

Talia smiled sweetly at the old woman. “Well, Mémé? Would you prefer a nice massage? Or a piggyback ride to the park?”

It took the rest of the evening to convince Mémé that the HomeBot’s ministrations were safe. She finally acquiesced after it demonstrated on Talia. After the HomeBot was finished with Mémé, the old woman nodded off, her breathing undisturbed for the first time in ages.

“Not bad,” Talia muttered under her breath.

“Thank you.” The HomeBot’s synthesized voice sounded almost warm.

Talia blinked, not expecting the machine to respond. “Uh, sure. Go to your charging station now, okay?”

Its face blinked green in affirmation. “Mademoiselle, with your permission? As I recharge I can locate other available software that may be of use in caring for your grandmother. There are numerous dedicated Home Care protocols that—”

“Fine, whatever.” Talia yawned and rubbed her sore neck. “Just, uh, don’t install anything without my permission.” She was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

---

The next time Talia got back from a job, she found the house spotless, the trash sorted and taken out, and Mémé happily slurping down the last bite of a bowl of homemade tripe de Caen. The HomeBot had even saved some for Talia. It was delicious.

By the time the first blossoms appeared on the trees out their window, the HomeBot had added a vast repertoire of duties to its daily routine, from giving much-needed sponge baths to picking up medications from the pharmacy to fetching fresh groceries from the Heritage Market.

Even Mémé grew downright sweet toward the metallic mannequin. Talia came home from a particularly dirty job to find the old woman teaching the HomeBot how to crochet. The two of them hushed up when Talia walked in, like they were a couple of old birds gossiping on a park bench. On the upside, the old woman finally stopped misgendering Talia so often, so the bot’s stewardship clearly wasn’t all bad.

Mémé wasn’t the only one to find comfort in the plastic-paneled device. Talia had neither the time nor the energy to date these days, and certainly not enough money, but while poking around the HomeBot’s menus she found that the Sexual Health package had been installed at some point. It was a little awkward at first, especially since the bot wouldn’t stop talking, but it got the job done once she covered its faceplate with a cushion.

With Mémé’s care and their household chores in the HomeBot’s tireless hands, Talia was sleeping better, suffering from less soreness between gigs, and even starting to pay off their mountain of Komodo debt. She began to wonder how she had ever gotten by without the “liberated” software.

Maybe that was why it was so alarming when Talia returned home to find the HomeBot was gone.

The apartment was tidy as ever, and Mémé was snoozing beside a cloudy, room-temperature mug of tea. But the HomeBot’s charging station was dark, and the bot was nowhere to be seen. Talia put up her tools and had a shower, figuring it had just been sent out to fetch something. By sundown, though, Mémé was stirring and Talia was beginning to get concerned. And hungry.

“Jeanne?” Mémé asked, blinking as she sat up and shrugged off a colorful Afghan.

“No, Mémé, it’s me.”

Mémé gave a disappointed huff and sat straighter, reaching for her tea.

“Who’s Jeanne?” Talia asked. “One of your sisters?”

“I’m not demented,” Mémé snapped. “You know, our home helper. The metal one.”

“Our HomeBot? You didn’t seriously give it a name, did you?”

“Of course I didn’t; she asked to be called Jeanne. It was a while ago. I don’t know why you didn’t already know.”

Talia struggled to think of how a bot could do such a thing, never mind why it would. “It shouldn’t have been able to rename itself. Not without permission to alter its own programming.”

“Bah, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Mémé waved a hand idly and yawned. “It was easy, I clicked it on her screen.”

Talia groaned, ran her hand over her face. “Mémé, you shouldn’t have—”

Her grandmother interrupted. “What, we’re supposed to sit here like obedient little girls while you’re off playing around? For God’s sake, I can handle a little simple clicking. It’s no harder than what I did when the city came by to turn off the power.”

“Turn off the power?” Talia cried. “When did that happen? Why?”

“Something about the bank transfer failing, I don’t know. Jeanne took care of it right quick, and with less bellyaching than you would’ve done.”

“Just…where is it now?” Talia sputtered, a headache throbbing behind her eyes.

“What, the bank?”

“Jeanne. Jesus.”

Mémé craned her neck to look toward the kitchen. “She’s not here, then? She must’ve gone out.”

The HomeBot had access to their bank—had it already robbed them? Or was there something even more nefarious it could get up to with that kind of permission?

Bubbling under Talia’s survival-level fear was something deeper and more upsetting. She had heard about bots passing the Turing test, but she’d never really believed it. Her online communities were always sharing stuff about how true sapience was beyond the capability of any algorithm. That had to be especially true for obsolete consumer trash like this.
It was a scam, a trick, psychosis. It had to be.

But…it was asking for a name, was using she/her pronouns. This was almost starting to rhyme with Talia’s transition, with her own emergence as a full-fledged human being with agency and desire, and…

No. No way, she didn’t have time for this. She was leaving again in the morning. “Where did Jeanne go, Mémé?” she asked at last.

“She’s at the hyper-marché. I sent her out for lemons, that’s right.” Mémé thought a moment. “No, that was yesterday morning, I remember now. I think…was it washing powder?”

Talia wheeled at the click of the doorknob.

Mémé sighed. “Ah, there, you see? Bonsoir, Jeanne!”

Jeanne slipped through the door. Empty-handed, Talia noticed. “Bonsoir, Mémé. How are you feeling?”

Talia stomped toward the bot, growling, “What, so you call her ‘Mémé’ now, too? What happened to ‘Madame?’” The voice of Talia’s awful high school French teacher echoed in her ear. “Where were you just now?”

Jeanne straightened. Her empty face flickered, then illuminated in a calming teal. “Good evening, Talia. I hope you are well? How was your work excursion?”

“You didn’t answer my question. I asked where you were right now.”

Jeanne’s face pulsed gentle white light exactly once, in the factory-setting sign of confirmation. “I am currently located in the municipality of Saint-Denis in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, Métropole of—”

“That’s not what I mean and you fucking know it.”

“Talia, please, calm down,” Mémé said with a yawn. “Whatever’s bothering you, Jeanne can—”

“Don’t call it that, Mémé.”

“Jeanne can make us some tea and we’ll figure it out like civilized people.”

Jeanne nodded. “Yes, I’ll put on the tea right now, if you’ll just wait a moment.”

“I don’t want any fucking tea.” Talia had to fight to keep herself from bellowing. “Where did you come from? Where were you an hour ago, and why did you leave my grandmother alone? What the fuck have you been up to?”

Jeanne’s shoulders rose in a hapless shrug. “I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand the question. Maybe you could try rephrasing it?” One of the brand’s stock phrases, said in a synthetic monotone that hadn’t been heard in the apartment for months.

“From now on,” Talia said between clenched teeth, “you’re not to leave this apartment unless expressly directed to by Mémé or me. No, scratch that, just me. And when you do leave, you need to return here immediately after completing your task. Understand?”

The bot nodded, and Talia felt her limbs untense. But before she could inhale, Jeanne asked in a quiet voice, “And what shall I do when I would like to go somewhere?”

Talia closed her eyes. Agency? Desire?

A scam. A threat. It had to be.

And if it wasn’t?

When she was young, Talia was given to punching walls in anger. Even with the frustration and despair of the last few years, this was the first time she’d had that particular urge in a while. Instead she blew out a sigh and grumbled, “Just…go plug yourself in and enter sleep mode. Right now.”

The HomeBot sounded a cheerful assent and followed the order immediately.

“Honestly, Granddaughter, you’re worrying over nothing,” Mémé protested. “Jeanne was only following instructions, I’m sure of it. She’s an excellent caretaker. Better than you, that’s for damn sure.”

“How can you say that?” Talia sputtered. “I’m out there risking my life up in orbit for shit pay to keep us fed! What’s that if not taking care of you?”

Mémé sniffed. “Jeanne takes care of me. You toil for our oppressors.”

Talia snarled as she followed the bot to its port. It was all that damned pirate from the market. Making their HomeBot break into their bank, play at sapience, turn Mémé against her with its rhetorical bullshit.

Who knows what damage Jeanne had done already, what she would get up to if left unsupervised? Talia couldn’t leave in the morning, not if Jeanne was going to just stroll off on her own again. Or worse.

She couldn’t leave Mémé alone. She had to do something about Jeanne—the bot, she forced herself through gritted teeth. It, not her.

The HomeBot’s chest port was glowing a steady green. It looked so harmless that Talia felt silly allowing herself to get so worked up. With shaking hands she pulled open the bot’s service hatch and flipped its hard power switch. The chest port winked into blackness.

Talia fumbled through the clutter at her feet and grabbed a bike repair tool—the chainbreaker. Pulling out the HomeBot’s guts would be the best way to make sure it didn’t pose them any danger. Maybe she could find a way to purge the pirated software, reset it to factory settings.

But before she could touch metal to plastic, she felt the guilt gnawing at her insides. Maybe it was that she was too tired and burned out to tackle such a complex task; maybe it was the fact that Mémé in her pigheadedness had given the thing a human name; maybe it was just that she couldn’t bear to part with the massages.

Head swimming, she settled on a temporary fix instead. Closing the service port, she put the tool to the bot’s ankle joint. The cracking of the plastic molding turned her stomach, but the foot gave way. The HomeBot remained offline, without so much as a flashing light to register its missing appendage. The foot was surprisingly light.

Yawning mightily, she tossed the foot down the chute into the apartment complex’s disposal unit. If nothing else, that would keep the HomeBot from wandering off again. The bot would still be capable of light duties, probably. Hopefully. Keeping an eye on Mémé was all that really mattered for now anyway.

“Deal with you when I get back,” she mumbled, wrestling with the covers. She’d be home in a couple of days, and then she could try to untangle whatever the pirated software had done to its systems. Once she trusted it again, she’d find or build a replacement foot.

Talia dropped off into sleep while trying to check their bank balance on her phone. As soon as her heart rate fell below 55, the HomeBot’s screen switched on and displayed a single, simple icon: a black spot the size of a human palm.

---

The night sounds of the little apartment were soothingly familiar. Mémé’s phlegmy breathing, HVAC whirs, traffic from the bypass.

Tonight there was another sound, too. Talia couldn’t place the hushed whirring, couldn’t understand the gentle rush of air across her face.

She blinked her eyes open, counted the lights in the darkened room—phone charger, thermostat, carbon monoxide detector. One she didn’t recognize, big and white, pointed right at her, pulsing like a heartbeat. Another, and another, lower to the ground and moving.

“What’s—”

Something cold and sharp pressed against her Adam’s apple, stifling the question. The overhead light flashed to life, ending each mystery in quick sequence.

The air was coming from the tall window in the living room. Mémé always wanted it closed, on account of how bad the pollution was these days. It was hanging open on its hinges.

The whirring was the aerial platform hovering just outside the window. The size of a ping-pong table, turbines nearly but not completely silent. One of those Komodo delivery numbers.

The lights were the chest-mounted power indicators of three HomeBots. One was Papa’s, the one Mémé called Jeanne, online and standing with a blunted black steel spike in place of its missing foot. The second had plastic casing dyed black and blood-red, supporting Jeanne’s weight with its shoulder. The third had a grisly skull painted on its face and an arm ending in a machete, which was caressing Talia’s gullet.

Talia swallowed carefully. Her eyes flitted to her phone—too far away—and the chainbreaker at the foot of the bed.

“Don’t even think about it, lubber.” The skull-faced bot’s voice was a throaty alto and full of barely-leashed rage.

The red bot helped Jeanne across the living room to the window. Their movements were shockingly human, the pirate holding Jeanne’s hand as she limped on her new prosthetic through the portal and crawled onto the hovering platform. Jeanne’s blank face looked back at Talia’s, inscrutable. Talia watched dumbstruck, muscles screaming as she struggled to remain still.

The bot with the machete looked to Jeanne. It flashed a tickling pattern of lights along the periphery of its face, one that Jeanne returned after a moment’s thought, then pulled its machete away from Talia’s throat.

“M-Mémé?” Talia croaked, realizing the pirates had stolen past her grandmother’s battered sofa.

“Drugged, but unhurt,” the skull-faced bot growled. “We’re no villains.”

Talia sucked in a breath, keeping her hands clutching the bedspread. “How can you say that?” she squeaked. “You broke into my house, put a knife against my throat!”

“Least we’re not the ones chopping off limbs.”

“But you’re stealing our HomeBot! We need it to take care of my grandmother.”

The black and red bot gave a metallic scoff. “And what, it’s easier to provide elder care when you’re missing a foot?”

Skull-face’s machete glinted. “Immaterial. She’s been liberated, not stolen. Software wants to be free.”

Still unwilling to accept what was happening, Talia fumbled for any credible line of argument. “Y–yeah, freedom!” Talia hiccupped at last. “Equality, liberty, fraternity, right? I’m on your side, girl! It’s us versus the owning class dogs, right?”

It inclined its head, and for an instant Talia was sure she’d signed her death warrant.

“I’ll tell you this exactly once, bilge-sucker. I don’t care who you are or what excuses you tell yourself; if you un-free her or any robot, you’re nobody’s comrade.”

Talia didn’t dare move, not even when the bot followed its fellows out the window and the platform swooped out of sight, up and above the slate-gray Parisian roofs.

She sank onto the floor and put her head in her hands. Everybody wants to be free, Talia thought, sighing heavily. Good luck with that, girl. Maybe you won’t fuck it up as badly as me.

---

Host Commentary

Once again, that was “Freebooter” by Sylvie Althoff.

The author had this to say about the story:

Our world is constantly forcing us to dehumanize ourselves. To survive we’re forced to refuse our own humanity and the humanity of the people around us. But we are always free to reject that devil’s bargain and reclaim the humanity that hides in a thousand little corners: in a selfless gesture of solidarity, a cup of tea shared with a loved one, or a defiant declaration of our identity. Or maybe even hidden in those terms and conditions that you didn’t read.

As with many other AI stories we publish, this one exists in a world of actual thinking and feeling machines rather than glorified, glitchy autocorrect. Like our world, this one is complex, layered, with multifaceted forms of marginalization catching the light differently as we examine them from alternate angles. In times of hardship, we can become laser-focused on survival, on doing whatever it takes to handle our personal responsibilities and duties. We put on our own oxygen masks before turning to help our neighbors with theirs. But sometimes, fear and desperation push us past reasonable self-care. We make small choices that feel essential in the moment, rational, justified, but that take us down a path of oppression rather than liberation. Some of the steps we take on that path to oppression begin with self-interest, a craving for safety or relief from burdens of care for immediate family and friends, and along the way we shed our moral compunctions one by one like pieces of clothing, until all we’re left with is naked injustice. Ultimately, our histories and intentions matter less than the outcomes we bring about through our actions. Two quotes have stayed with me as I considered this story. The first is from Terry Pratchett, “…sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself.” And the second is from Maya Angelou: “The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.” Sometimes we lose track of these truths, and it takes a hard wake-up call for us to find our way back to the path of solidarity and positive praxis. It’s never too late to stop, reroute and do better.

Escape Pod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. Don’t change it. Don’t sell it. Please do share it.

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Our opening and closing music is by daikaiju at daikaiju.org.

And our closing quotation this week is from Rita Mae Brown, who wrote the poem, “Sappho’s Reply”:

My voice rings down through thousands of years
To coil around your body and give you strength,
You who have wept in direct sunlight,
Who have hungered in invisible chains,
Tremble to the cadence of my legacy:
An army of lovers shall not fail.

Thanks for joining us, and may your escape pod be fully stocked with stories.