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Escape Pod 988: In the Palace of Science (Part 2 of 2)

In the Palace of Science originally appeared in Asimov’s May/June 2024.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:58 — 59.5MB)

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In the Palace of Science (Part 2 of 2)

By Chris Campbell

(…Continued from Part 1)

B-Side

 

Track Five–

 

The automaton was unfinished, but even in a transitory state, it was a thing of marvel. In form, it was like a man. With two legs meant for bipedal ambulation and two arms with three-fingered hands meant for grasping. Although roughly, from the thickness of its fingers. The design of the machine differed most strikingly from the ideal human in the shape of its head and body, for it had no neck. Rather, a barrel-shaped torso attached directly to a head that was meant to be enclosed within the thick, vaguely egg-shaped glass dome sitting next to the machine.

The front piece of the barrel-shaped body was also set aside on a nearby table, exposing its chassis and internal mechanism. Peering inside, it became clear that filling the hole within this hollow man was the singular aim of much of the work I’d been doing for years.

“I call him Talos.” (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 987: In the Palace of Science (Part 1 of 2)

In the Palace of Science originally appeared in Asimov’s May/June 2024.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:36 — 52.1MB)

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In the Palace of Science (Part 1 of 2)

By Chris Campbell

Track One–

 

If you’ve found this recording, two things can be said for certain. The first is that I have passed my greatest test as a man and, in doing so, have passed from this world. The second is that if this message entombed with me survives, a grave danger to humanity most assuredly survives with it.

To my listener, I urge you to lift the needle from the gramophone, return this plate to the hole where you found it, and dig no further into the ruins where once stood Professor Thomas Washington Kelly’s Palace of Science. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 986: Lyra, From Many Angles

Escape Pod 986: Lyra, From Many Angles is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:24 — 69.7MB)

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Lyra, From Many Angles

by Hiron Ennes

When they came, it was in a craft the size of a golf ball. Smooth and round and perfectly seamless, it cut open the night sky in a pale streak. For a scant second it struck a fiery blemish across the moon’s face, catching the attention of forty-four children, twelve adults and a bewildered flock of geese before boring a meter-wide crater into a dry lakebed in northern Mexico.

The explosive technicians were the first to the scene. Then came counter-bioterrorism, lumbering in prophylactic spacesuits prophetic of their evolution into the Global Office of Extraterrestrial Affairs. Soon after came the Agencia Espacial Mexicana, the Northern Hemispheric Space Association, what remained of the UN, then a dozen other acronyms, most of which would dissolve before the year was out. The confused tangle of letters amassed around the crater, investigated, argued, agreed, backstabbed, and then finally excavated the little craft only to bury it in a bunker in Corpus Christi. There it stayed the worst kept secret on Earth for nearly fifty years.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 914: #buttonsinweirdplaces (Part 2 of 2)

#buttonsinweirdplaces originally appeared in Abyss & Apex (2020).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:49 — 40.3MB)

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#buttonsinweirdplaces (Part 2 of 2)

By Simon Kewin

(… Continued from Part 1)

The news the following morning was bad. An explosion in the middle of a market-square in Libya had been variously blamed upon a suicide-bomber and upon over-zealous security forces trying to control crowd trouble. The truth of it made little difference to the eighty who’d died, the hundreds left broken in the aftermath. Tensions had flared on the Mexican/American border after a young man fell to his death attempting to climb the wall to reach the USA. In Ireland, the names of old republican and nationalist groupings had been resurrected, wielded anew by figures wearing balaclavas and holding assault rifles.

Cho switched off the car radio. Sometimes it seemed the world was intent on tearing itself to pieces, and she needed to focus on the plan.

She’d travelled north to the Ma On Shan Country Park. Her predictions suggested there would be a button near the top of one of the remoter peaks. If it was there, it not only helped confirm her theory, it also meant she could experiment without any interruptions – something impossible part-way up a skyscraper. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 913: #buttonsinweirdplaces (Part 1 of 2)

#buttonsinweirdplaces originally appeared in Abyss & Apex (2020).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:14 — 37.4MB)

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#buttonsinweirdplaces (Part 1 of 2)

By Simon Kewin

The buttons started to appear on the last day of April, 2022.

A six-year-old boy from Nairobi, Jomi Mbenzi, was perhaps the first to spot one. Dawdling along behind his mother, her swaying yellow-orange dress and the bag of melons and paw-paws she carried, his attention was caught by the shiny button set in the stone of one of the city’s office buildings. He squatted to study it. Strange that it was so low-down, right near the ground. In his experience, switches – and all other interesting aspects of the adult world – were kept high-up, out of reach, but here was this button set right where he could get at it. He was sure it hadn’t been there an hour ago when they walked down the same road toward the fruit market. Ground-level was his domain and he noticed everything there, while the confusing, noisy grown-up world went on around him and above him.

There was no writing on or near the button, nothing to suggest what its purpose might be. Buttons often had words on them to say what they did, words he rarely understood. Or else, they had warnings nearby telling you not, under any circumstances, to press – a fact which always struck him as odd. Why have a button you couldn’t press? (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 876: Like Stars Daring to Shine

Like Stars Daring to Shine was first published by Fireside Magazine, July 2022.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:08 — 43.2MB)

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Like Stars Daring to Shine

By Somto Ihezue

When the boy opens his housing unit’s steel door and the incandescent lights pour into his face, he does not blink away. “Little suns” — this is what everyone calls them. The massive disks hover in the atmosphere, spilling streams of radiant light to the ground. The boy stares into the trees, mere meters from the door, and the forest encaving the unit stares back. A breeze finds him, whistling through the trees and into his dungarees. Threadbare with a Batman logo printed on them, the over-alls belonged to his mother when she was a child. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 874: Common Speech

Escape Pod 874: Common Speech is an Escape Pod original.

This story deals with plagues and description of injuries.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:28 — 55.6MB)

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Common Speech

By Elise Stephens

Dr. Jaiyesimi Obiaka tugged at her sweat-damp collar, wiped her eyes, and tried to focus on the copied pages of the final experiment she and Ganiru had created together. Just looking over his familiar handwriting blurred her vision with tears.

Jai’s colleagues had told her to stay home, to take time to grieve, but she’d allowed herself just two days to mourn her husband’s death before donning her lab coat again. She had to be pragmatic. (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 785: Death, the Universe, and Everything

Escape Pod 785: Death, the Universe, and Everything is an Escape Pod original.

Contains descriptions of death and suicide.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:34 — 54.9MB)

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Show Notes

An international list of suicide prevention hotlines and other suicide prevention resources is available HERE.

Death, the Universe, and Everything

By Sherin Nicole

The morning after it happened for the first time, I–

I’m not sure if I should tell you, but maybe you can tell me. If your understanding of reality fundamentally changes, does it change you?

And how responsible am I for who you become? 

I don’t know.

And that relative state of not knowing is the start of my conundrum. And my conflict.

The morning after it happened for the first time, I woke up with half of my soul hanging out of my body. The worst case of pins and needles possible. The pain was a soft plodding ache, but it couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. It hurt. (Continue Reading…)

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