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Escape Pod 1068: A Struggle Between Rivals Ends Surprisingly (Flashback Friday)

“A Struggle Between Rivals Ends Surprisingly” was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (August 2014), and in Escape Pod 457

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:38 — 38.4MB)

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Show Notes

This episode is sponsored by Sleepphones! Use code ESCAPEPOD and get 10% off your purchase.

A Struggle Between Rivals Ends Surprisingly

by Oliver Buckram

While the harbormaster fidgeted at his desk, Treya checked her pipes. They were, of course, in perfect condition: the leather supple and the drones polished. She’d brought her double-chantered smallpipes today, in case the negotiations grew complex.

The harbormaster snapped shut his pocket watch. “That damned beetle is already ten minutes late.”

Treya walked to the window. On the street below, a fishmonger pushed his wheelbarrow through a group of green-skinned Cantharan peddlers while a Glanite hoverjar floated by. But there was no sign of the beetle. If he didn’t show up, Treya wouldn’t get paid.

She scrutinized the hoverjar as it wafted through an intersection. Inside its murky interior, there must be a Glanite. The squid-like creatures seldom visited Port Raskol. What was it doing here? Might it want to hire a translator?

At last Treya spotted the beetle’s top hat bobbing above the heads of other pedestrians. His fringed leather vest marked him as a servant of the beetle Baroness.

After a few moments, the beetle was ushered into the office. Treya and the harbormaster bowed and the beetle spread his stubby hindwings in greeting. After Treya piped a welcome, he responded with a cacophony of wails, whines, and groans from his spiracles.

She translated in a low voice. “He’s doing the Lamentation on Congestion…apologies for being late…greetings from the Baroness. He’s going off on a tangent. Could be an extended monologue. No…He’s back on track. We’re definitely doing the first scene of A Routine Mercantile Transaction. It’s a one-act, so this shouldn’t take long.”

When the beetle finished his lines, Treya glanced at the harbormaster.

“Ask him why the Baroness is behind on her docking fees,” he said. The Baroness owned a fleet of fishing vessels currently in the harbor.

Treya shook her head. “That will serve no purpose. At best, he’ll give us a discourse on unavoidable delays, and at worst, he’ll push us into a convoluted subplot. No, at this point in A Routine Mercantile Transaction, you need to state your demands.”

“I want those fees paid. Right now.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1067: Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being (Part 2 of 2)

Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being originally appeared in Clarkesworld 218 (November 2024). 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:10 — 58.4MB)

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Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being (Part 2)

By A. W. Prihandita

(…Continued from Part 1)

Semau made her way to the pier feeling bloated and hollow all at once.

She carried a duffel bag of medical instruments she’d stolen from the office: a stethoscope to record breaths and heartbeats, a set of syringes to take various kinds of fluid samples. These were instruments she normally used to collect data for the INT-Health model to analyze. That night, she’d put them offline, hoping against hope that a few hours of disconnection wouldn’t be enough to alarm the Medical Board.

And just in case, she’d reviewed the protocol for malpractice suspicion. The Board would have to send an overseer to lead her investigation. The nearest headquarter of the Medical Board was a system over, which meant the overseer would take a week to arrive, if Semau was ever suspected of anything. Which hopefully she never would be. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1066: Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being (Part 1 of 2)

Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being originally appeared in Clarkesworld 218 (November 2024). 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:17 — 48.9MB)

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Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being (Part 1 of 2)

By A. W. Prihandita

“Doc, there’s a . . . hole growing in me,” the alien said through the spherical interpreting machine hovering over them.

Semau barely registered the word “hole,” so taken was she by the sight of the alien. If she were just a tad less caring about propriety, she would’ve let her eyes blow wide open. The alien looked impossibly transparent yet not transparent at the same time, like a mound of water. Their shape was almost humanoid: a roundish head sitting atop a misshapen lump of torso. They were visible in the way ocean waves were visible, only through folds that magnified its translucence to almost-opaqueness.

Semau glanced again at the patient form. Name: Txyzna (he/him). Species: Plyzmorynox-matori. Semau had never heard of the plyzmorynox before, and a quick lookup in the Brazs’s Database of Interstellar Species told her this wasn’t her fault. The plyzmorynox had an occurrence rate of 0.000013% of interspecies encounters, which made her impulsively count the decimal places—she’d never seen anything that small. She wanted to look up the Matori system as well—what kind of place was home to this super rare species?—but this wasn’t the time to satisfy idle curiosity. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1053: The Game of Possibilities

Escape Pod 1053: The Game of Possibilities is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:37 — 32.9MB)

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Show Notes

Ethan Ham

https://www.ethanham.com/index.html?second-edition

Elie Hirschman

https://eliehirschman.com/

Adam Pracht

https://escapepod.org/people/adam-pracht/

Alasdair Stuart

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

Reiner Knizia

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/2/reiner-knizia

SleepPhones

https://www.sleepphones.co.uk/

Voidmerch store

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

The Game of Possibilities

By Ethan Ham

It was Emmett’s first tournament, so his dad had to pay for an American Gata Association membership in addition to the entry fee. At the registration table, Emmett was given a lanyard printed with his name, age (twelve years old), and supposed rank.

Emmett’s dad transferred enough money for Emmett to buy lunch, said a few words of encouragement, and left. The gata tournament was an all-day affair, and non-players weren’t allowed in the game room, so it made sense for his dad not to stick around. Still, Emmett found himself choking down a small sense of abandonment.

With nothing else to do, Emmett joined the flow of players moving towards the tournament hall. Stepping through a bank of doors, he entered an enormous room that held a seemingly endless grid of tables, each neatly outfitted with game boards and numbered stands. (Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 1038: Meet the Mets

Escape Pod 1038: Meet the Mets is an Escape Pod original.

Contains brief moments of violence and bigotry towards a transgender character

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:03 — 60.5MB)

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Show Notes

Sponsored by Mixtape Stories

Meet the Mets

by Ace Tilton Ratcliff

1964

Bobby didn’t know who threw the first punch.

A fist glanced off his cheek, then a smattering of blows rained down in the darkness, a private thunderstorm of focused pain. His head was empty of everything but his brother Tom’s voice as he became a profligate expenditure of answering energy and motion. Wrist straight. Tuck your thumb over, not under.

Tom, weaving and bobbing in insistent demonstration beside their enraged dad. The sound of Tom’s closed fist smacking his open palm added an erratic tempo to being bodily thrown out the front door. Bobby tripped down the steep front steps, falling in a heap of his own clothes, scattered haphazardly across the sidewalk. It was the last time he’d seen his family.

Growing up, he’d figured out teeth and nails worked where skirts held him back. Roberta—he hated that name, especially once he realized his dad hated him—became a spitting, hissing, feral beast who drew blood however and whenever they came after him for who he was.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Escape Pod 1034: “An Honour to be Nominated…”

Escape Pod 1034: “An Honour to be Nominated…” is an Escape Pod original.

Mild profanity

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:13 — 50.2MB)

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“An Honour to be Nominated…”

by Jacob Seinemeier

TRANSGALACTIC NEWS- straight from the feed to your screed!

“…and how exciting to be gathered here for this night of nights, as the Planetary Terraforming awards for the 346 billionth Galactic cycle gets underway here at the Ghentool™ Interdimensional Ballroom!

Whether you’re tuning in via tachyon wave-transfer from the distant future, or via mental projection from the dawn of time; hologram, Tachygram or gene-tweaked data-encoder, we have all the stars of the industry gathered together on the Vermillion Carpet. Faint at the latest fashion! Gasp at the gossip! Most importantly, stay tuned- because we will be broadcasting live and in person to answer that most sought after of life’s questions- who will be this cycle’s rising star? Who will take home the coveted Terraformer of the Cycle Award?

Only we can give you the answer…but if you want the answer to your thirst, don’t forget to reach for a pouch of cool, clammy Ghentool™ and quench that fire…!”

(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 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 1022: Butter Side Down (Part 2 of 2)

Butter Side Down originally appeared in Writers of the Future (volume 40) – May 2024.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:42 — 77.1MB)

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Butter Side Down (Part 2 of 2)

By Kal M

 

(…Continued from Part 1)

 

INTERVIEW LOG 10023869-01-03

SUBJECT: SMITH, JOSEPH (HUMAN)

Captain Crab said humans have special abilities? Oh, sure, that’s true. It’s called sweat. It’s this biological function humans have to regulate our body temperature. You’ve heard of it? Yeah. It makes us great endurance athletes. We can also do this nifty thing called going into the alarm stage. Basically, in an emergency, our brains turn off our pain receptors and divert all energy into survival. So we’re kind of weak and slow, normally, but under duress we get this big burst of power. Sometimes you hear stories of humans managing weeks without food, or lifting several times our body weight, or cutting off our own limbs to escape a trap. An injured human can keep going for ages. That’s why, when things get dangerous, you want a human around just in case. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1021: Butter Side Down (Part 1 of 2)

Butter Side Down originally appeared in Writers of the Future (volume 40) – May 2024.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:04 — 69.2MB)

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Butter Side Down (Part 1 of 2)

By Kal M

DEPARTMENT OF LAW ENFORCEMENT CASE FILE 10023869

UNITED INTERGALACTIC SPACE COUNCIL OF FREE SENTIENT PERSONS (PLAINTIFF) VS HUMAN JOSEPH SMITH (DEFENDANT)

CHARGE(S): THEFT OF FEDERAL PROPERTY, TREASON, BREACH OF CONTRACT, CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT MURDER, WARMONGERING, CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT GENOCIDE

STATUS: DECIDED

VERDICT: GUILTY

SENTENCE: DEATH.

(Transcript begins).

INTERVIEW LOG 10023869-01-01

SUBJECT: SMITH, JOSEPH (HUMAN)

STATUS: DEFENDANT

It’s not such a crazy situation when you think about it. All I did was fall in love with a toaster and cause an intergalactic political incident. I don’t see why it’s such a big deal. It could’ve happened to anyone, yeah? (Continue Reading…)

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