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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 1003: Billionaire’s Tears

Escape Pod 1003: Billionaire’s Tears is an Escape Pod original.

Includes cursing, death by communicable disease (albeit not by the usual means).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:45 — 48.2MB)

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Billionaire’s Tears

By Vanessa Ricci-Thode

I wake up to the sound of screaming, and know I’m going to die.

I shoot out of bed, calling for my mother. First thing I’ve spoken clearly in two days.

“Maria!” My mother bursts into my room. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

“S-sorry, Mamma,” I whisper, frantically searching for the right syllables so I don’t trip over them and give it all away. I can’t let Mamma suspect I’m dying—or how soon it’ll happen. “Nightmares.”

Mamma’s smile is sad. The world’s finally getting better, but not for everyone. For us, still struggling, it’s like it’s only getting worse. Everyone in the family has been having nightmares. But when Mamma accepts my explanation and doesn’t seem bothered by the screaming that surrounds us and has not stopped, to me, anyway, that’s when I know. I have a week tops if I’m lucky. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 917: Challenges to Becoming a Pro Dragonracer in Apapa-Downtown

Escape Pod 917: Challenges to Becoming a Pro Dragonracer in Apapa-Downtown is an Escape Pod original.

Includes cursing and physical abuse.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:49 — 46.9MB)

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Challenges to Becoming a Pro Dragonracer in Apapa-Downtown

By Uchechukwu Nwaka

The gear is too expensive.

Honestly. There isn’t enough competition in the market. The Immersion® console alone costs an arm and a leg. Ọmọ. You’ll sweat to even get a Nigerian-used console on Jiji or at Computer Village for less than 200k. And that’s just the console. We’re not even talking about the vests or the mats.

Or the chair!

For real though. How else does somebody experience the saddle—on dragon-back—if they can’t experience the full flex of the dragon’s powerful muscles under their thighs? I’ve seen the streams of American pro dragon-racers in full Immersion® gear—visor, suit, chair! The rich kids here are enjoying, on God! (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 886: If My Body Is a Temple, Raze It to the Ground

If My Body Is a Temple, Raze It to the Ground originally appeared in The Reinvented Heart (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy), February 2022.

Includes sexual harassment.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:25 — 40.9MB)

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If My Body Is a Temple, Raze It to the Ground

By Lauren Ring

Thea helped me with my upload today. Decent response speed. Props to whoever designed her—so realistic!

— anonymous customer review for Acheron Uploads, four out of five stars

 

I know, I know. Don’t read the comments. But Charlie, my sweet Charlie, swearing at the circuits I’ve set on the fritz with my seething, you don’t understand what this feels like. I know you’ll never hear me, but even thinking the truth helps: I am not an AI. This isn’t some robot revolution or some uplifted pedanticism. I’ve never been anything other than human.

Surely by now you must suspect that. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 849: There Are No Hot Topics on Whukai

“There Are No Hot Topics on Whukai” originally appeared in Lightspeed Magazine in May 2021.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:46 — 60.6MB)

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There Are No Hot Topics on Whukai

by Andrea Kriz

The day the dMods shut down Skeleton Caves, Esko put on her VR goggles and slipped into the Whukai space colony’s main chatroom to figure out what was going on. All the Whukains who made their living off the popular Terran MMORPG, d’Artagnan, had the same idea. Beside her, on top of her, avatars logged in—an absolute pandemonium of photorealistic, 8-bit, anime animals and humanoids and everything in between. The two main gold-farming clans had already started fighting among themselves.

“How many times did I tell you PKers,” the head of Esko’s clan screeched. “To leave the Terran players alone!”

“It don’t matter how many Terran players we killed,” leader of the rival HunterFam roared, “when you idiots kept giving us away by speaking Kainese! We. Must. Speak. Terran languages! That’s why all the Terran players reported us to the dMods!”

Esko tore off her VR goggles, tossing them onto her bunk. The interior of her sleeping pod, one toy block in a cluster of thousands, flooded back into view. A storm had kicked up outside, clogging her porthole with Whukai’s trademark scarlet soil. She didn’t have time to waste arguing over whose fault it was that d’Art’s most lucrative moneymaking method had been nerfed. She needed to come up with four hundred dollars for her parents’ chemo drugs. And this month’s rent.
(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 815: Mathematical Revelations

Escape Pod 815: Mathematical Revelations is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:45 — 56.4MB)

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Mathematical Revelations

By Helen De Cruz

I have never had a Mathematical Revelation in my life. I am presently thirty-eight years and three months old; the first strands of gray have made their hesitant debut in my dark brown hair. I have been a Priestess for about half that time, and yet the Supreme Mathematician has never uttered a word to me.

There is no shame in this, unusual as it is. I remind myself that the Supreme One has many ways to let us know Her intentions, direct Revelation being only one among many.

I am on the shore, kneeling on the fine sand; the azure combers with their white crests dance and dart ever closer, so I must make haste to trace my Sand Graphs, before they are swept away by the ocean. (Continue Reading…)

Black Future Month

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Escape Pod 806: Bright Lights Flying Beneath the Ocean

Escape Pod 806: Bright Lights Flying Beneath the Ocean is an Escape Pod original.

Contains harsh language.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:20 — 27.0MB)

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Bright Lights Flying Beneath the Ocean

by Anjali Patel

[Draft] (no subject) – 2:23 AM

My dearest Tasha, Moon bug, favorite sister…

How are you? I know it’s been a minute. I’m sure you’ve been busy. Probably doing all sorts of smart, lawyer things I don’t understand — litigating and adjourning. Protecting people. Being good. I believe in you, always have. You are the better sister. Things in Accra are good, by the way. I’m finishing my PhD, finally. I’ve made friends. It would be better, of course, if you were here.

I know you are still alive.

I am haunted by the fact that I am fine and you might not be. You are the last face I see before I fall asleep, the first person I imagine when I lie in a half-dream state where we still share a room, twin beds on opposite sides, separated by a few feet and the sticky, glowing stars we plastered across the ceiling. I think of those girls and I envy them for being able to fight and scratch and pull at each other’s hair and hug and scream as if they would not one day be separated by an ocean.

Wait for me. I am coming.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 782: Electronic Ghosts

Escape Pod 782: Electronic Ghosts is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:29 — 58.8MB)

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Electronic Ghosts

By Innocent Chizaram Ilo

I

If Nneora had died two weeks earlier, her daughter, Anaeto, would not have resurrected her ghost. That was the night Nneora ran a fever, laid convulsing in bed, a slimy froth trickling from the corners of her lips. She had just finished telling Anaeto a story about a woman who fled home to find love. And when the fever subsided, she proceeded to talk to her late mother, Lolo-Nwa, in a tongue that reeked of everything living and dead. Dying on a night like that would have meant Nneora died complete, that her daughter was prepared for her death.

But Nneora will die this evening, when the air is the same as the feel of damp salt on dry skin. She will die midway telling Anaeto a new story. Nobody would believe, not that you can blame them, that Anaeto will do what she does because she is scared the Ghost Of Unfinished Stories will haunt her. Not even Anaeto herself. At some point, she will tell herself this lie: that she resurrected her mother’s ghost because the inquisitive scientist in her wanted to know how the story that numbed on the old woman’s lifeless lips ended. This is more plausible, more logical. A more scientific reason. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 729: Gaze of Robot, Gaze of Bird

This story was first published by Clarkesworld Magazine in April, 2019.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:53 — 59.4MB)

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Gaze of Robot, Gaze of Bird

By Eric Schwitzgebel

First, an eye. The camera rose, swiveling on its joint, compiling initial scans of the planetary surface. Second, six wheels on struts, pop-pop, pop-pop, pop-pop, and a platform unfolding between the main body and the eye. Third, an atmospheric taster and wind gauge. Fourth, a robotic arm. The arm emerged holding a fluffy, resilient nanocarbon monkey doll, which it carefully set on the platform.

The monkey doll had no actuators, no servos, no sensors, no cognitive processors. Monkey was, however, quite huggable. Monkey lay on his back on the warm platform, his black bead eyes pointed up toward the stars. He had traveled wadded near J11-L’s core for ninety-five thousand years. His arms, legs, and tail lay open and relaxed for the first time since his hurried manufacture.

J11-L sprouted more eyes, more arms, more gauges – also stabilizers, ears, a scoop, solar panels, soil sensors, magnetic whirligigs. Always, J11-L observed Monkey more closely than anything else, leaning its eyes and gauges in.

J11-L arranged Monkey’s limbs on the platform, gently flexing and massaging the doll. J11-L scooped up a smooth stone from near its left front wheel, brushed it clean, then wedged it under Monkey’s head to serve as a pillow. J11-L stroked and smoothed Monkey’s fur, which was rumpled from the long journey.

“I love you, Monkey,” emitted J11-L, in a sound resembling language. “Will you stay with me while I build a Home?”

Monkey did not reply.
(Continue Reading…)

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