Archive for 10 and Up

Escape Pod 231: Solitary as an Oyster

Escape Pod 231: Solitary as an Oyster is an Escape Pod original.

Rated PG. Contains ghostly visitations. Film at 11.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:46 — 35.7MB)

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Show Notes

Special Closing Music: “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” by Twisted Sister.

Solitary as an Oyster

By Mur Lafferty

“Who’s there?” the voice asked, rough and unpleasant. Robert and Lydia glanced at each other.

“The Paranormalists, Mr. Scrooge. You called us a couple of hours ago,” Robert said.

“Took you long enough,” the voice said. The door clicked as Scrooge unlocked several locks, and finally it slid open a couple of centimeters. Scrooge peered out, the heavy chain still on the door. Jenny flipped the night vision off her camera to get a clear view of him in the foyer’s dim light. He was much smaller than his voice implied, a diminutive man who was probably a bear in the conference room, but a pussycat when in thin pajamas and a robe.

Well, not a pussycat. Something more like a weasel.

Escape Pod 230: Candy Art

First appeared in Asimov’s, December 2002.

Rated PG. Contains family drama and way too much sugar.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:46 — 26.7MB)

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Show Notes

Special Closing Music: “Podsafe Christmas Song” by Jonathan Coulton.

Candy Art

By James Patrick Kelly

“They’re uploads, Jennifer.” When I first met Mel, I thought the sleepy voice was sexy. “How can they move in with us when they’re not anywhere?”

“They bought a puppet to live in,” I say. “Life-sized, nuskin, real speak – top of the line. It’s supposed to be my Christmas present. Bring the family back together for the holidays and live unhappily ever after.”

“A puppet.” A puzzlement glyph pops up at the bottom of my screen. “As in one puppet?”

“It’s a timeshare – you know. They live it serially. Ten hours of him, fourteen of her.”

“Not fifty-fifty?”

“He’s giving her the difference so he can take extra time off for his bass tournament in June.”

Escape Pod 229: Littleblossom Makes a Deal With the Devil

First appeared in Electric Spec in October 2008

Rated PG. Contains violence and political complexity.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:38 — 23.8MB)

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Show Notes

Sponsored by SleepPhones – Pajamas For Your Ears

Littleblossom Makes a Deal With the Devil

By S. Hutson Blount

From beneath the camouflage of kindling on her back came Grandma Thinkbox’s quiet voice. “You should have something hot to drink, child. Do not make yourself sick.”

“Yes, nainai. As soon as I check on Pig.”

After Comrade Liu had been evacuated with the last of the support troops, Xiaoying had rearranged the personality of her assistant battlefield AI into something that suited her better. If she were going to spend months carrying it around, she wasn’t going to listen to it drone on like a party chief. The way it talked now reminded her of her grandmother. The missiles had overlays for their small brains, too, and she’d decorated them with personalities as well. Boredom was a more immediate enemy than Japan.

Escape Pod 228: Everything That Matters

First appeared in Interzone #219

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:13 — 39.3MB)

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Show Notes

Closing music: “Heartache Over Innsmouth” by Norm Sherman.

Sponsored by SleepPhones – Pajamas For Your Ears

Everything That Matters

By Jeff Spock

“I have done over fifteen hundred dives,” I said, and let that sink in. The number was astronomical for a guy my age, even for a professional. “I have done free diving down to eighty meters. I have worked as a commercial diver and in commercial salvage.”

They were listening and nodding, concentrating on me while recording the conversation. “Then you, of all people, should have known better,” said the little guy.

“I did know better!” They were acting like the shark was the victim, not me. “How many people in the whole fucking galaxy could have come up alive, huh? How many would have had the technology and experience and conditioning?”

“If you want our congratulations, you got ’em,” said Odenny. “But we’re more interested in what you were doing.”

Escape Pod 224: The Ghost in the Death Trap

Escape Pod 224: The Ghost in the Death Trap is an Escape Pod original.

Rated PG for some violence and language.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:31 — 27.9MB)

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Show Notes

Editor’s note:  this is a sequel to EP007.  Listen to it here.

The Ghost in the Death Trap

By Marjorie James

Flies buzzed around the edges of the huge stone block, gathering at the rivulets of blood that ran down to the floor. A bit of what looked like it might be intestine hung off one corner, drawing special attention. It was a testament to the force of the collision that fragments of bone and tissue were scattered all the way down the passage, some even wedged in the carvings in the stone walls. Two men surveyed the scene with dismay.

“See? And this just keeps happening. It’s getting so we can’t get anything done around here,” said the taller of the two, a grey-haired man with red eyes and a patchy beard.

The other man, younger but not precisely young, hauled himself up on top of the block and examined the mechanism. “This bar’s been sliced right through.” He looked back down at his client. “You say this was a poltergeist?”

Escape Pod 221: Little Ambushes

Escape Pod 221: Little Ambushes is an Escape Pod original.

Rated PG-13 for some adult situations and coarse language.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:20 — 14.0MB)

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Little Ambushes

By Joanne Merriam

Practically the first thing she did when she took in the alien was to give him a new name. He looked at her outstretched hand long enough to annoy her, and then grasped it with his four opposable fingers and hung on limply until she wrenched her hand out of his moist and over-jointed grip.

She said, “I’m Sarah,” and he said his name, or what she assumed was his name, in return, rolling the syllables around in his mouth like so many rough pebbles. His name was too long, something like Shperidth with extra grunting noises in the middle, like a car backfiring very far away. She tried to repeat it and couldn’t, while he stood on her doorstep sweating and folding his fingers around each other. She frowned at him.

“I can’t say that,” she said.

Escape Pod 220: Come All Ye Faithful

Escape Pod 220: Come All Ye Faithful is an Escape Pod original.

Rated PG

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:05 — 23.4MB)

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Come All Ye Faithful

By Robert J. Sawyer

“Damned social engineers,” said Boothby, frowning his freckled face. He looked at me, as if expecting an objection to the profanity, and seemed disappointed that I didn’t rise to the bait.

“As you said earlier,” I replied calmly, “it doesn’t make any practical difference.”

He tried to get me again: “Damn straight. Whether Jody and I just live together or are legally married shouldn’t matter one whit to anyone but us.”

I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of telling him it mattered to God; I just let him go on. “Anyway,” he said, spreading hands that were also freckled, “since we have to be married before the Company will give us a license to have a baby, Jody’s decided she wants the whole shebang: the cake, the fancy reception, the big service.”

Escape Pod 215: Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store

First appeared at Robin Sloan’s blog, June 8, 2009.

Rated G. May contain creepy imagery and disturbing data visualizations.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:36 — 32.0MB)

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Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store

By Robin Sloan

IT’S 2:02 A.M. ON A COLD SUMMER NIGHT.

I’m sitting in a book store next to a strip club.

Not that kind of book store. The inventory here is incredibly old and impossibly rare. And it has a secret—a secret that I might have just discovered.

I am alone in the store. And then, tap-tap, suddenly I’m not.

And now I’m pretty sure I’m about to snap my laptop shut, run screaming out the front door, and never return.

Escape Pod 211: Carthago Delenda Est

Story originally appeared in Federations.

Rated PG for political machinations and waiting…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:50 — 21.2MB)

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Carthago Delenda Est

By Genevieve Valentine

Wren Hex-Yemenni woke early. They had to teach her everything from scratch, and there wasn’t time for her to learn anything new before she hit fifty and had to be expired.

“Watch it,” the other techs told me when I was starting out. “You don’t want a Hex on your hands.”

By then we were monitoring Wren Hepta-Yemenni. She fell into bed with Dorado ambassador 214, though I don’t know what he did to deserve it and she didn’t even seem sad when he expired. When they torched him she went over with the rest of the delegates, and they bowed or closed their eyes or pressed their tentacles to the floors of their glass cases, and afterwards they toasted him with champagne or liquid nitrogen.

Before we expired Hepta, later that year, she smiled at me. “Make sure Octa’s not ugly, okay? Just in case—for 215.”

Wren Octa-Yemenni hates him, so it’s not like it matters.

Escape Pod 210: The Hastillan Weed

This story originally appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction (February 2006).

Rated PG for plants with many uses.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:20 — 28.4MB)

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The Hastillan Weed

By Ian Creasey

“Since we have so many new faces,” I said to the half-dozen volunteers, “I’ll start with a tools talk. Safety points for the spade — the most important is that when you’re digging, you push with the ball of your foot.”

I picked up a spade from the pile, and demonstrated by digging up a bluebell growing by the hedge. From the large bells all round the stem, I knew it was a Spanish bluebell, a garden escape that if left unchecked would hybridise with the natives. Too late now, though. You can tell the British bluebell because the flowers are smaller, deeper blue, and they’re usually
on one side of the stem, so the plant droops under their weight as if bowing down before its foreign conqueror. There’s hardly a wood left in England where you’ll see only native bluebells.

“Or you can use your heel on the spade.” I heaved the invader out of the earth and tossed it aside, knowing it would safely rot. “But you should never press down with the middle of your foot. The bones in the arch are delicate, and you can injure yourself.”

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