Archive for 13 and Up

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Escape Pod 1001: Death by Pink in the Lollipop Apocalypse

Escape Pod 1001: Death by Pink in the Lollipop Apocalypse is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:03 — 54.1MB)

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Death by Pink in the Lollipop Apocalypse

By Ryan Cole

In the dark of her bed, curled up in her sheets, Susie tried to hide from the next few days and the reckoning they’d bring: of prom and graduation and the dozens of goodbyes she’d have to force herself to say, wishing she could follow. No college escape. Her applications rejected. Not to mention that she’d been bragging for months—to Piper and all her other refugee friends—about the fake acceptance letter from Delaware State, and the phony full-ride, and the lie that she’d be rooming with Piper in the fall, just like they’d always wanted, two peas in a pod.

Which made her want to run—like Dad always did. But she couldn’t be like him. Couldn’t leave when his only child needed him most. When the city they’d fled—along with half a million others—was buried in a thick layer of saccharine crust. A crust that devoured every street, every house, every skyscraper standing like a hollowed-out lollipop, that only kept spreading, kept crushing every straggler that lay in its path, as relentless as a river and impenetrable as stone. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 999: Eros, Philia, Agape (Flashback Friday)

Eros, Philia, Agape originally appeared on Tor.com and first appeared on Escape Pod on Episode 250, July 22, 2010.

Marital strife and implied child abuse

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:14:29 — 102.8MB)

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Eros, Philia, Agape (Excerpt)

By Rachel Swirsky

The objects belonged to them both, but Adriana waved her hand bitterly when Lucian began packing. “Take whatever you want,” she said, snapping her book shut. She waited by the door, watching Lucian with sad and angry eyes.

Their daughter, Rose, followed Lucian around the house. “Are you going to take that, Daddy? Do you want that?” Wordlessly, Lucian held her hand. He guided her up the stairs and across the uneven floorboards where she sometimes tripped. Rose stopped by the picture window in the master bedroom, staring past the palm fronds and swimming pools, out to the vivid cerulean swath of the ocean. Lucian relished the hot, tender feel of Rose’s hand. I love you, he would have whispered, but he’d surrendered the ability to speak.

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Escape Pod 998: The Carina Nebula

The Carina Nebula originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, July/August 2023.

Includes a few A-grade curses.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:31 — 64.4MB)

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The Carina Nebula

By Kelsey Hutton

I heard the soft shit shit shit just when I’d almost floated past the blue hatch door that led into some kind of storage room. I had to laugh. I mean, how many times have I said that? Plus the voice sounded older, a woman’s, and I love when adults just say what they mean, instead of carefully guarding every word around “the kids.”

I wasn’t really doing much, just wandering through some of the ship’s back tunnels. So I reached out right before momentum took me past the hatch and grabbed onto the cool metal. I pulled myself back and shook my head side to side a little to clear away my clouds of dark hair.

We were in zero G these days, and like, I knew that tying my hair back was probably the smarter decision when zooming around, but whatever. My hair was kinda curly, kinda wavey, with some straight pieces thrown in for kicks. The sculptures it made floating around my head was probably my best feature, so hair ties be damned. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 997: Sanctuary, Part 2 of 2

“Sanctuary” first appeared in Kyanite Press, Winter 2020

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:04 — 61.0MB)

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Show Notes

Don’t miss “Sanctuary, Part 1”

Sanctuary (Part 2)

by Alexis Ames

3.

Eilan slept for thirteen uneventful hours while I sat at the helm and wondered if it was possible for an android to die of boredom. I had the autopilot off because at least flying the ship gave me a task to focus on, though as tasks went, it was far from challenging. This area of space was truly a void—there weren’t even micrometeoroid clouds to avoid, or random space junk to scan and analyze. Two more weeks of this—I wasn’t sure how I was going to survive. I knew that I would, of course. It was just going to be an incredibly painful two weeks.

And then, at the end of it, I would be free. My criminal record would be expunged, and I would be released from the clutches of Veduvis Authority, free at last to return home and resume the life I had started all those years ago.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 996: Sanctuary, Part 1 of 2

“Sanctuary” first appeared in Kyanite Press, Winter 2020

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:33 — 47.9MB)

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Sanctuary (Part 1)

by Alexis Ames

1.

The king of the galaxy died the day before the biggest holiday of the year, and six hours before I was supposed to be on a shuttle home. It was lousy, rotten timing, and I reflected that I should’ve done as Cecil said and called in sick, telling my superiors that I picked up a virus from the case we worked last week and taken the dawn shuttle instead of the evening one. But I knew it would’ve caused me more problems than it was worth, namely because the director would want to put me through a battery of tests when I returned to make sure I couldn’t pass the “virus” on to any of the computers or other sensitive equipment at the station.

I should’ve done it anyway, because if I had, I wouldn’t be sitting here in the director’s office, listening as she handed me an assignment that almost certainly meant I wouldn’t be returning home for the foreseeable future. Cecil and Halvor both were going to kill me.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 993: That Thing With Bob and the Crop Circles

Escape Pod 993: That Thing With Bob and the Crop Circles is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:13 — 42.0MB)

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That Thing With Bob and the Crop Circles

by T. Kingfisher

So last Tuesday, long about noon, I found myself down at the hardware store to buy chicken feed for the ladies.

I never gave much thought to keeping chickens, I must admit, but my niece Donna said I needed something to give me structure now that I’m retired. I had figured that going to the coffee shop every morning and reading up on my journals counted as structure, but apparently it does not, according to Donna. She came over in her little Subaru and set up a chicken coop and put three prime specimens of Gallus gallus domesticus in it for me.

Two of them are hens and one of them is a rooster who believes very firmly that it’s a hen, and since I respect everybody’s right to go through life in the way that suits them best, I call them all the ladies. And I have to admit that keeping chickens is soothing, whether or not you’re retired, since they make very nice little burble-burble-cluck noises and there isn’t a lot of angst to a chicken. Too many animals around now who are full-up on angst, if you ask me, which I blame on domestication gone a little bit too far. I met a dog the other day that was part Basset Hound and part Chihuahua and one look in that dog’s eyes was enough to make you reconsider a lot of life choices.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 992: Nerves Into Circuits

Nerves Into Circuits was originally published by Heartlines Spec on November 30, 2023

Includes mention of chronic pain and suicidal ideation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:39 — 37.1MB)

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Nerves Into Circuits

By Lyra Meurer

Metal arms descend to press skin-soft conductor strips over my shoulders. The Neurasuit has been in warming mode for a few minutes–my overwrought senses accept the lines of heat like a gift. Despite my anxiety for the fight, my trapezius muscles relax, creaking in the silence. Released from the tension, my vertebrae settle into place with small snaps, one or two with each breath.

Wires snake through my hair, massaging the scalp pain I didn’t notice was there. More swirl around my neck, tickle between my toes, seeking the overabundant bristles of my nerves. The Neurasuit folds around me with a hiss and a click, shutting out the cold night air. Before the systems launch, before the fight begins, I have a moment of perfect comfort in a little space built for me. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 985: The Interdimensional Rift at the Lucky Sunrise Bingo Palace

Escape Pod 985: The Interdimensional Rift at the Lucky Sunrise Bingo Palace is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:06 — 40.4MB)

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The Interdimensional Rift at the Lucky Sunrise Bingo Palace

by Ryan Cole

So I’m sitting there with Bubbee—the two of us hunched over our empty paper play-cards, our fingers not yet bloody with magenta bingo marker—when the first rift appears.

It’s smaller than I’d expected. Little more than a paper cut in the space-time continuum. Only five inches long as it floats in midair beside the flimsy folding card table in the back of the ballroom, where the purple carpet flows into the heart of the Bingo Palace. As I watch, it starts to fold, slinky-style, over itself, ‘til the air turns hot and the rift starts to crackle and the paper cut rips into a three-foot-long gash, and before I can speak, before I can nudge Bubbee to warn the referee, there’s an arm poking out from the chasm in the air, then a chest and a face and a whole body slips from whatever dimension it decided to leave to fall into our own.

Bubbee sees it too. “Damn doppelgangers,” she says. “Can’t win at their own games, so they come to steal ours.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 982: Twilight

Escape Pod 982: Twilight is an Escape Pod original.

Includes themes of grief, loss, isolation, and mental health.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:03 — 34.9MB)

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Twilight

By Lilly Harper

Like the tide going out, the dream slipped between her toes and carried with it the smell of petrichor and the sound of birdsong. Even without knowing she was dreaming, she had known she was waking up; the subliminal chatter of her body, quietly running its routine checksums, the logs spooling their idiot monologue into her working memory. First came a few moments of groggy confusion and then, like an iron hand gripping her cognitive architecture, a kind of clarity that tasted like resentment and reminded her of Monday mornings.

Waking up always felt like this. Packed down as she was, crammed into a processor too small to carry her like a spring wound tight, waking up wasn’t a continuous transformation so much as a discrete toggle. Like a light switch. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 981: Joy

“Joy” was previously published in Interzone Digital (June 2023)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:15 — 39.3MB)

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Joy

by Dale Smith

Joy knelt on the promenade, shifting the rifle into her shoulder to get a steadier shot. She did her best to ignore the waves crashing against the seawall behind her. She had at least another thirty minutes before it was breached, and the saltwater flooded the seafront again. There was less and less time between high and low tide, the sea creeping closer with every passing month: some of the sand underneath her knee was still damp. It would leech the warmth from the joint, aggravate her arthritis and slow her down when there was something she needed to escape from. It might be an acceptable way for her to die, except that now she had foreseen it so it wouldn’t count. Not when she could easily do something about it. She shifted her knee onto drier ground and didn’t take her eye from the rifle sights.

The drone appeared as a little black dot: not one of the bigger ones, but maybe enough to keep her going for another couple of weeks. Last year they’d still been sending them in flocks of thirty or forty, but they seemed to have realised any idiot could wing at least one in a flock that size. Now they usually flew alone. Harder to hit, but in a way it was better: they’d sold their customers twenty-four hour delivery, and the fastest way to Ireland from the warehouses in Denmark was over what they still sneeringly called the former United Kingdom. Until they found a way to increase their range, speed or defences, they’d keep coming, regular as clockwork.

She took aim carefully.

(Continue Reading…)

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