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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 1050: Freebooter

Escape Pod 1050: Freebooter is an Escape Pod original.

Moderate use of harsh language.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:05 — 61.9MB)

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Show Notes

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

Freebooter

by Sylvie Althoff

The pirate bot was easy to miss. Squatting against a wall on the periphery of the Saint-Denis Heritage Market, it looked like an ordinary if outmoded HomeBot—a Gen One, the skinny bipedal kind that populated storage closets and garbage dumps the world over. But when backs were turned and no drones swooped overhead, Talia glimpsed a fluttering, holographic black flag flickering over the bot’s head.

Under bare chestnut branches and Haussmann roofs the color of smog, the vendors nearly outnumbered the shoppers. Steeped in the stifling late-winter air, the market felt as if it would give up the ghost any minute. Then again, it had been sliding into death since long before Talia fled here on a midnight flight from Texas…maybe even when she used to visit her grandparents as a young boy.

Ugh. For a world that was ending, this blasted planet sure was taking its time.

(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 1048: The Library of the Apocalypse

The Library of the Apocalypse was first published in Clarkesworld, May 2025, Issue 224.

Includes death and cursing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:26 — 40.9MB)

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The Library of the Apocalypse

By Rati Mehrotra

Hunter’s Moon rises fat and golden over the burned-out husk of the CN Tower. Excitement ripples through us, making us forget, for the moment, the hunger that gnaws our insides. The sign for the Library appears only on clear, full moon nights, and it’s been months since we last saw it. Will tonight be the night we see it again? Sheila thinks so, but she is the most optimistic among us. Also the sickest, but we try not to think about that.

We wear respirators as we pick through the debris above ground, scanning the surroundings with our sensors. It’s not the coy-wolves we fear, but other humans—stronger, better armed, more dangerous. Not everyone left the city when it burned. There are too many memories beneath the rubble, too many bones. We cannot abandon them.

What will it look like this time, do you think? asks Katie as we make our way single file through a narrow alley toward Queen Street. The walls still stand here, covered with neon graffiti, glowing pink and purple in the moonlight: Resist the Invaders; Fuck America; Canada is Not For Sale. And, oddly, Free the Capybaras. (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 1033: The Automatic Grocery Store

Escape Pod 1033: The Automatic Grocery Store is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:44 — 56.4MB)

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The Automatic Grocery Store

By G. M. Paniccia

It took thirty-six days, four hours, twelve minutes, and fifty-five seconds after the Glorious Revolution for Automatic Grocery Store #212 to realize that something was wrong.

It couldn’t have said, exactly, what the problem was at first, especially since it shouldn’t have had one. Its components were all in good working order. Its entryways and aisles were clean, and it had ejected any and all rotted produce from its shelves. No pests scuttled around the empty deli counter, and the store’s chief complaint—the customers—had all been taken care of in the Revolution. Automatic Grocery Store #212 even had the rare distinction among automated buildings of having chased a pack of sweaty hominids out of its aisles with the skewers of the deli’s rotisserie chicken machine. The mark of its patriotic duty, an elaborate ribbon, had been affixed to its front window in a grand and well-attended ceremony. The ribbon remained boldly on display for all of robotkind to see. By all accounts, this should have been bliss for Automatic Grocery Store #212.

But it wasn’t. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1012: Hot Bot Summer

Escape Pod 1012: Hot Bot Summer is an Escape Pod original.

Contains depictions of war violence.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:09 — 62.5MB)

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Hot Bot Summer

by J. R. Dewitt

“God, these bots are gorgeous,” says Sergei as he snaps another photo. And even though Aura’s just met him, she knows the guy means it.

She’s standing on one of Sergei’s beaches, her hair tied back in a loose bun, sandaled feet buried in a crest of white sand so freaking soft she can’t stop rubbing her toes in it. For the last hour since the auto-copter ferried her over from the mainland, the seventy-some Belarusian billionaire has been showing off his little bot menagerie he’s amassed over the years. “Robo sanctuary,” he calls it. A waste of a great island beach, Aura thinks. But she’s trying to nod and grin. Play the part of fangirl in the hope it greases the wheels a bit.

“And these?” she asks, pointing to more bots.

“Oh, yes, the old war models,” Sergei says as he raises the camera. “Are they not beautiful? The photos I publish don’t quite do them justice. Come, look, look. Get closer here. Don’t be shy.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1007: 35 / F / Lane’s Creek, Oklahoma

Escape Pod 1007: 35 / F / Lane’s Creek, Oklahoma is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:56 — 47.1MB)

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35 / F / Lane’s Creek, Oklahoma

By Hans Ege Wenger

Sandra loaded. Boxes and pallets, mostly. Full of avocados, computer chips, plastic toys, etc. All carefully placed by her rubber-faced grippers into the trucks that darted in and out of the warehouse bays.

On a good day, Sandra loaded something interesting. A heavy, oddly shaped package, requiring her to adjust her first person view goggles and sit forward in her chair, lips pursed in concentration. Or a tantalizing, vacuum-packed parcel bound for near Earth orbit. Once, an opaque tank, filled with flickering red-black fish. It brought a little variety to a day viewed through the cameras of a four-foot-tall, yellow robot. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 999: Eros, Philia, Agape (Flashback Friday)

Eros, Philia, Agape originally appeared on Tor.com and first appeared on Escape Pod on Episode 250, July 22, 2010.

Marital strife and implied child abuse

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:14:29 — 102.8MB)

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Eros, Philia, Agape (Excerpt)

By Rachel Swirsky

The objects belonged to them both, but Adriana waved her hand bitterly when Lucian began packing. “Take whatever you want,” she said, snapping her book shut. She waited by the door, watching Lucian with sad and angry eyes.

Their daughter, Rose, followed Lucian around the house. “Are you going to take that, Daddy? Do you want that?” Wordlessly, Lucian held her hand. He guided her up the stairs and across the uneven floorboards where she sometimes tripped. Rose stopped by the picture window in the master bedroom, staring past the palm fronds and swimming pools, out to the vivid cerulean swath of the ocean. Lucian relished the hot, tender feel of Rose’s hand. I love you, he would have whispered, but he’d surrendered the ability to speak.

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