Archive for 10 and Up

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Escape Pod 1051: You Have Arrived at Your Destination

Escape Pod 1051: You Have Arrived at Your Destination is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:46 — 70.2MB)

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You Have Arrived at Your Destination

By Jo Miles

It starts with an accident.

A dreary day, the road slick with rain. Emily’s letting the car’s auto-drive do the work because she’s brain-fried and exhausted, eyes glazed over from the weekday grind. In her head—and okay, muttering aloud—she’s continuing today’s argument with Calvin, the project manager, about timelines and corner-cutting and how they’re possibly going to get this update done on schedule, when the old woman walking a cat—walking a cat?—steps into the street without looking.

The car reacts faster than Emily’s distracted human reflexes; a millisecond’s analysis of the situation and its programming determines how to minimize harm, swerving to hit a telephone pole instead of the person. As the car whips around, in the prolonged instant before the crunch, the old woman stares at Emily. Long nose in a shriveled face. Cloudy grey eyes that, despite being shadowed by the raincoat’s hood, stab straight through Emily, seeing too much.

The afterimages of those eyes dance in Emily’s vision as she punches back the airbag.

“Shit! Oh, damn it.”

Heart pounding, adrenaline sour in her throat, Emily is more awake than she’s been in months. She stumbles out on shaking legs, apologies spilling out of her. “Hey, holy crap, I’m so sorry, are you okay?”

But the old woman is gone. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1049: Amrit

Amrit originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2023.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:59 — 80.1MB)

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Show Notes

Kiran Kaur Saini

https://kirankaursaini.com/

Kaushik Narasimhan

https://www.castofwonders.org/people/kaushik-narasimhan/

Alasdair Stuart

https://escapepod.org/people/alasdair-stuart/

Robot and Frank

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_%26_Frank

Void Merch

https://voidmerch.threadless.com/collections/escape-artists-inc-x-voidmerch-1

Amrit

By Kiran Kaur Saini

The doorbell rang as Fox Singh lay staring into the plumbing under the kitchen sink. “Go away!” He wasn’t expecting anybody, and if any of his neighbors ever rang, it was only to complain about the volume of his television. The joints on the p-trap looked like Fox’s knees felt—crusted over with white flake but somehow still leaking fluids all over the cabinet.

“Mr. Singh,” a voice called. “This is Amrit, your Senior Well-Being Unit.”

What? This couldn’t be. Did they honestly think he was that old and incapable? Fox hauled himself up and hobbled to the peephole. The Unit wore a hot-pink turban with leopard spots. Seriously? His beard was tucked tidily under his chin, though, much neater than Fox’s, and his glaring turban was also more streamlined: impressively crisp, each overlap at precisely the right position. In recent years Fox had resigned himself to a delivery service, and though the scanner had read the shape and measurements of his head, the turbans never fit as they would if he tied them himself. The Unit smiled and waved. He really did look almost human. Fox licked his fingers, twirled the ends of his mustache together, smoothed his beard, and opened the door. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1047: EDIE (Part 2 of 2)

“EDIE” was first published in Analog Science Fiction & Fact (January/February 2023)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:38 — 46.2MB)

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Show Notes

Don’t miss Part 1: Escape Pod 1046: EDIE (Part 1 of 2)

EDIE (Part 2)

by James Dick

EDIE was a smart machine, but every machine, no matter how smart, was prone to mistakes. She made a life-threatening mistake by continuing to channel power to the absent melt probe.

It wasn’t her fault. The strange circumstances that had cut the melt probe loose from its umbilical exploited a glitch in EDIE’s programming; a two-digit error committed by a human ten years ago who hadn’t slept very well one night before work.

But just as this situation had been, in part, created by a human operator, so too was it remedied by the same. Another programmer, who perhaps had drunk a tad too much coffee one morning, had the foresight to include a failsafe program in EDIE’s software. After her power dropped below forty percent, the failsafe kicked in.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1046: EDIE (Part 1 of 2)

“EDIE” was previously published in Analog Science Fiction & Fact (January/February 2023)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:13 — 48.8MB)

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EDIE (Part 1)

by James Dick

High above Europa, a lonely traveller reached the end of her journey.

A spacecraft the size of a school bus, with two solar panels like giant silicon wings, slipped into orbit above Jupiter’s ice-covered moon. Inside the spacecraft’s cargo bay, a passenger awoke. Her arrival at Europa was an event two decades in the making. It had involved the efforts of five thousand scientists, engineers, and bureaucrats. Now, they were all about to learn whether those efforts would pay off.

The cargo bay opened, and for the first time ever, EDIE saw sunlight.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1041: Love in the Time of Dust and Venom

Love in the Time of Dust and Venom originally appeared in 2013 Fiction River – Time Travelers.

Includes a form of assisted suicide.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:35 — 42.5MB)

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Show Notes

Sponsored by Mixtape Stories

Love in the Time of Dust and Venom

By Sharon Joss

Using his walker to brace himself, Keiko watched her ancient grandfather stoop beside the packed dirt path and tug at a weed. Nearby, sprinklers sang shoop-shoop-shoop in the stillness, sending cascades of water across the wide expanse of lawns. She saw his eyes twinkle as he slapped the roots against the side of his worn black trousers. The scent of moist earth joined the fragrance of lavender and eucalyptus in the quiet July morning.  The old man stood and slowly put the dandelion in his pocket. He knew she didn’t approve, but this had become their little ritual.

When he first came to live with them, he spoke rarely, and then only Japanese; a language she struggled to recall from childhood. She found him to be a man of expression, rather than words. The first time she brought him to the LA County Arboretum he spoke to her of how much he missed his wife and home.  Now they came every Tuesday morning, after she dropped the boys off at school. There was no sense of time or country here.  They’d come to think of the botanical gardens as their special place.

He toddled over to their favorite bench; the rough wooden one beneath the purple jacaranda tree with a good view of the Queen Anne Cottage. Then, as the bees hummed around them, he took her hand as he often did, and her 97-year-old grandfather began to tell her about lightpulse technology. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Escape Pod 1031: The Anatomy of Miracles (Flashback Friday)

Escape Pod 1031: The Anatomy of Miracles (Flashback Friday) is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:46 — 71.7MB)

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Show Notes

Escape Pod branded SleepPhones

Kameron Hurley – The Last Few Years Broke Our Sense of Time. Here’s How I Started Rebuilding It.

https://www.kameronhurley.com/the-last-few-years-broke-our-sense-of-time-heres-how-i-started-rebuilding-it/

Kameron Hurley At Escape Artists

https://escapepod.org/?s=kameron+hurley

Strange New Worlds

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Strange_New_Worlds_season_1

Void Merch

https://voidmerch.threadless.com/collections/escape-artists-inc-x-voidmerch-1

Hot Singles In Your Area

https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/hot-singles-in-your-area-jordan-shiveley/7704976?ean=9781800183414

The Anatomy of Miracles

By Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko

For half a song every evening, the sunsets reminded the miracle worker of home. The hills were reddish-brown in daylight, but when the two suns, one after the other, slipped below the horizon, they came alive with purple highlights. He could almost pretend the hills were blue, instead, that the sea in the distance was true water and not liquid methane. On those occasions, he leaned back on his rear limb-pairs and, from a great distance, heard the timekeepers singing time.

He didn’t know what the window was made of. He couldn’t have said there was a window there at all, but for the fact he didn’t suffocate. He understood why his masters always sent him to inhospitable planets. His work was imprecise. It was safer that way. But this was the first planet that had been beautiful, the first that had brought the old songs ringing back. It was different. He felt it in his bones.

By first dawn, the hills were red again, and he was merely an old man who had not seen home in a long, long time. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1029: Graduated Justice: An Amelia Li Mystery

Graduated Justice originally appeared in Translunar Travelers Lounge, February 2025.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:52 — 42.9MB)

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Graduated Justice: An Amelia Li Mystery

By Myna Chang

I was leaning against my desk in the Mars Dome cop shop, rubbing nano-repair gel on my prosthetic leg, when I caught the rookie staring at me. Or rather, staring at my leg.

“Go ahead, kid, get it out of your system,” I said.

“Sorry, Detective Li, but… Your leg doesn’t really talk, does it? That’s just an old precinct legend?” (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1025: Samantha’s Diary (Flashback Friday)

Samantha’s Diary originally appeared in Stories: All-New Tales Edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio and on Escape Pod, episode 427 on December 22, 2013.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:26 — 64.3MB)

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Samantha’s Diary

By Diana Wynne Jones

Recorded on BSQ SpeekEasi Series 2/89887BQ and discovered in a skip in London’s Regent Street.

December 25th 2233

Tired today and having a lazy time. Got back late from Paris last night from Mother’s party. My sister is pregnant and couldn’t go (besides, she lives in Sweden) and Mother insisted that one of her daughters was there to meet our latest stepfather. Not that I did meet him particularly. Mother kept introducing me to a load of men and telling me how rich each of them were: I think she’s trying to start me on her own career which is, basically, marrying for money. Thanks, Mother, but I earn quite enough on the catwalk to be happy as I am. Besides, I’m having a rest from men since I split up with Liam. The gems of Mother’s collection were a French philosopher, who followed me around saying ‘La vide ce n’est pas le neant,’ (clever French nonsense meaning ‘The void is not nothing,’ I think), a cross-eyed Columbian film director, who kept trying to drape himself over me, and a weird millionaire from goodness knows where with diamante teeth. But there were others. I was wearing my new Stiltskins which caused me to tower over them. A mistake. They always knew where I was. In the end I got tired of being stalked and left. I just caught the midnight bullet train to London, which did not live up to its name. It was late and crowded out and I had to stand all the way.

My feet are killing me today. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1024: Some Things I Should Probably Have Mentioned Earlier (LIVE) (Flashback)

This story was originally published in Mothership Zeta, May 2016, and republished in Escape Pod 650: Some Things I Probably Should Have Mentioned Earlier (LIVE)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:10 — 37.8MB)

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Show Notes

This is a live reading from Worldcon 2018.

Some Things I Should Probably Have Mentioned Earlier

by Laura Pearlman

Dear Kevin,

I’m sorry I waited so long to tell you this, but I really hate your vacation cabin. Everything about it creeps me out. The sound of crickets at night makes my skin crawl. They sound like impending doom: like a critical piece of equipment being worn down by friction, or a thousand tiny voices, hoarse from screaming, reduced to a raspy warning chant in some ancient language.

The crickets aren’t the only problem. The smell of so much wood in one place makes my eyes burn. And is it really necessary to throw pine cones into the fireplace? Are the burnt-wood fumes not overpowering enough? I used to lie awake at night fantasizing about finding whoever came up with that idea, grinding them up, feeding them to the crickets, and then gathering up the crickets, stuffing them into the fireplace, burning the cabin down, and watching from a safe distance. Upwind, of course.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1023: Mackson’s Mardi Gras Moon Race

“Mackson’s Mardi Gras Moon Race” originally appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:38 — 45.3MB)

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Mackson’s Mardi Gras Moon Race

by David DeGraff

Turtles were built for short-haul Lunar prospecting, not treks across the entire face of the Moon, but back in 2043 João Silva Henrique, desperate to celebrate Carnaval, drove a turtle from Amundsen Crater at the south pole to Byrd Crater at the north pole. Unsanctioned celebrations of any kind were forbidden in the Chinese stations, but there were enough Brazilian workers at the north pole to make the risk of trekking across unexplored terrain seem worthwhile. Now that Brazil controls Byrd Station, it’s an annual race. And I’m going to win it. If I live.

(Continue Reading…)

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