Archive for Podcasts

Escape Pod 179: Arties Aren’t Stupid

First appeared in Seeds of Change, ed. John Joseph Adams

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:40 — 25.2MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains some harsh slang and violence against the system.

Referenced Sites:
The Dispatches of Dr. Roundbottom
Philippa Ballantine’s official site

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Arties Aren’t Stupid

by Jeremiah Tolbert

Nobody went home to their Elderfolk while we waited for Niles to come back. That was a rule. If Niles never came back, then we wouldn’t have to. Nobody wanted to see the meanies anyway. They had us Made and then hated us afterwards, which wasn’t fair. All arties know you love the things you Make no matter what. But Elderfolk were just-plains all grown up and they didn’t make any sense at all. Some of the younger arties started to talk about going back, but we older arties who knew Niles better said no, that we’d wait.

Three days passed before Niles came back. It was dark and everyone was sleeping but me, because little Boo’s music itched in my brain. He came in carrying big boxes, and I cried big tears of happy at that. He’d brought some new supplies, and we’d be Making again in no time flat. I watched him for a while, carrying in box after box, and finally I fell asleep. It felt good knowing he was back.

Escape Pod 178: Unlikely

Originally published in: Asimov’s, January 2008.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:48 — 26.0MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains profanity. Including in the closing song.

Special closing music: “Mandelbrot Set” by Jonathan Coulton.

Unlikely

by Will McIntosh

“The mayor seems to believe there’s something to this,” Tuesday said.

“He’s desperate. Clutching at straws.”

“So why did you agree to meet?” Tuesday asked, her Keds back on the black and white tile floor.

Samuel paused while the waitress plunked down two glasses, followed by big metal milk shake tumblers. His strawberry milkshake looked as thick as cement. Damn, did he love this place.

“Professor Berry said there was an easy way to prove him wrong: meet with you on and off for a week. If the city’s accident rate didn’t go down when we were together, and back up when we were apart, he’d return his consulting fee to the city.” The shake made a satisfying plopping
sound as he poured it into the glass. “His ideas are wacked. ‘Data mining for non-intuitive connections?’ You can smell the bullshit from three pastures away.”

Escape Pod 177: Usurpers

Originally appeared in Azimov’s

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:29 — 23.7MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R. Contains strong language, strong emotions, and moderate violence.

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Usurpers

By Derek Zumsteg

King spots a knock-off cluster, glowing sunny in the rain, too fit, perfectly proportioned. Tear off some burnished bronze, never-burning skin. Shove it under a microscope, see the designer signature, Chinese characters like tattoos on the necks of college girls.

All ten ranked cross-country runners this season took family trips to China after school let out last year. When they’d returned and established dominance, King took the Asics guy up on his offer to join the experimental training program. Found himself running by himself, following daily instructions from an email address. King knows there’s a machine on the other end, some oracle in some data center chewing on his performance data full time. Responds only to email, immediately, all hours.

Escape Pod 176: How The World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth

Escape Pod 176: How The World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:07 — 21.4MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains war, invasion, exodus, mass extinction, religious revival, and a lot of mud.

Referenced Sites:
Resonance FM
Reality Break Podcast

How The World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth

By Rachel Swirsky

Humans laid the foundation for the sixth apocalypse in much the same way they’d triggered the previous ones. Having recovered their ambition after the Apocalypse of Serotonin and rebuilt their populations after the Apocalypse of Grease, they once again embarked on their species’ long term goal to wreak as much havoc as possible on the environment through carelessness and boredom. This time, the trees protested. They devoured buildings, whipped wind into hurricanes between their branches, tangled men into their roots and devoured them as mulch. In retaliation, men chopped down trees, fire-bombed jungles, and released genetically engineered insects to devour tender shoots.

The pitched battle decimated civilians on both sides, but eventually — though infested and rootless — the trees overwhelmed their opposition. Mankind was forced to send its battered representatives to a sacred grove in the middle of the world’s oldest forest and beg for a treaty.

Escape Pod 175: Reparations

Originally appeared in Fortean Bureau. (June 2004)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:48 — 19.1MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains mass destruction and graphic descriptions of the wounded.

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Reparations

By Merrie Haskell

I just swab my arm and administer the cocktail, a booster for my radiation immunization. The taste of brass fills my mouth in seconds, and I know that the cocktail has flooded my system. With this stuff burbling inside, I can stare down three sieverts without blinking, or, more importantly, losing my immune system, teeth, hair, and intestines.

When I finish with my dose, I grab the skin on the newbie’s arm, swab her and shoot her up, too. “Ow!” She jumps and rubs her arm. I watch carefully to see her smack her lips at the taste. “You could’ve warned me.”

“No time,” I say, doctoring Ken and the others just as abruptly. We’re pressed, and they know it.

We’re all nice and anodized on the inside at 8:12. We’re waiting for 8:16, or thereabouts. There aren’t any atomic clocks in 1945, so all times are approximate, internally speaking. And from here on in, there’s no point speaking any other way.

Escape Pod 174: Private Detective Molly

Originally published in Strange Horizons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:30 — 26.5MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. A somewhat dark kid’s story; contains parental tragedy and complex social issues.

Private Detective Molly

By A.B. Goelman

That’s when I see my new boss. Four feet of trouble. Brunette variety. Tear tracks cutting through the dirt on her face, wearing jeans that were already old when Molly Dolls were nothing more than molded plastic and fantasy homes.

She’s no idiot, though. “I want the Debutante persona,” she says. “You’re still not Debutante Molly are you?”

I like a girl who doesn’t need me to explain everything. “That’s right, kid,” I pull my blonde hair back into a pony tail and cover it with my fedora.

“Why do you keep coming out as a Petey persona?” Poor kid sounds like she’s about to cry. Don’t blame her for wanting Debutante Molly. Debbie’s the kind of girl who reminds me why God bothered with Adam’s rib in the first place. As wholesome and satisfying as a virgin daiquiri on a hot day. Everything I’m not. “Petey’s not even a girl’s name,” the kid says.

Escape Pod 173: Robots Don’t Cry

Rated R. Contains profanity and some sadness.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:23 — 29.1MB)

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Robots Don’t Cry

By Mike Resnick

Every now and then we strike it rich. Usually we make a profit. Once in a while we just break even. There’s only been one world where we actually lost money; I still remember it — Greenwillow. Except that it wasn’t green, and there wasn’t a willow on the whole damned planet.

There was a robot, though. We found him, me and the Baroni, in a barn, half-hidden under a pile of ancient computer parts and self-feeders for mutated cattle. We were picking through the stuff, wondering if there was any market for it, tossing most of it aside, when the sun peeked in through the doorway and glinted off a prismatic eye.

“Hey, take a look at what we’ve got here,” I said. “Give me a hand digging it out.”

Escape Pod 172: Union Dues: Tabula Rasa

Escape Pod 172: Union Dues: Tabula Rasa is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:41 — 28.0MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R. Contains profanity, sexual innuendo, and a bit of soap opera.

Referenced Sites:
Playing for Keeps by Mur Lafferty

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Union Dues: Tabula Rasa

By Jeffrey R. DeRego

I raise my hand and she stops chattering. “Just tell me who you are and where I am.”

She freezes and blinks twice. “Tell you where you are? Cap, you’re home. This is the Cleveland Pyramid. I’m Sarah Shadow. You don’t recognize me?”

“That doesn’t mean anything to me!” I stand up. Frustration washes over me like heat from a blast furnace, and worse, my stomach is rumbling. “I woke up today. The first person I saw was you, but I’ve never seen you before in my life. I figured as long as I was in the hospital, or wherever, I’d start to remember, but it’s a blank. Where am I, what is this place, what are you people?” I point at her costume. “And that, what’s that, are you part of a circus act or something?”

Escape Pod 171: Fenneman’s Mouth

Originally appeared in Beluthahatchie and Other Stories

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:50 — 25.3MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R. Contains profanity, and real and simulated persons behaving badly.

Featured Site:
Playing for Keeps

Fenneman’s Mouth

By Andy Duncan

“Fenneman?”

The studio audience laughed loudly, as it always did when Groucho turned, in mock desperation or annoyance, to his long-suffering, hopelessly square announcer. Groucho’s voice slightly increased in pitch whenever he said Fenneman’s name, as if he were just at the edge of losing his celebrated cool. This half-squawk had been funny in the stateroom scene of A Night at the Opera (“Steward! Steward!”), and it was still funny on You Bet Your Life twenty-five years later. He was a pro, Groucho was, and I did right by him; I modulated that pitch myself.

Escape Pod 170: Pervert

First appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 2004

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:03 — 24.1MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R. Contains explicit sexual activity.

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Pervert

By Charles Coleman Finlay

When the bus reaches the corner, they climb onboard, taking seats on their side and evening out the ride so it doesn’t feel so much like we’ll tip over. We rattle along past road construction, the men working behind screens that are consecrated by the priests each morning as part of the men’s quarter, and resanctified to the women at quitting time. The sun already pelts down mercilessly and they will have to leave off working soon.

We enter the government quarter and arrive at the Children’s Center, a long concrete brick of a building with windows shielded from the sun by an open grid of deep squares made of the same material. The morning light turns it into a chessboard of glaring white and dark shadow. I don’t work with the children, who are on the lower floors and the sheltered playground of the courtyard, but toil away with records on the upper floors. Unlike Jamin or Zel, I am permitted by the job to work alongside women, but only because I completed my theological studies and am a candidate for the priesthood. My superiors do not know of the taint on my soul. Do not know yet, I should say, and when they discover it I will never be ordained or promoted.

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