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Escape Pod 1000: A Thousand Names for God and Infinite Mustard

Escape Pod 1000: A Thousand Names for God and Infinite Mustard is an Escape Pod original.

Contains some harsh language

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:27 — 42.3MB)

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A Thousand Names for God and Infinite Mustard

by Matt Wallace

Kimo found God hiding out inside a dark nebula in the MACS0416_Y1 galaxy. He trapped God in an empty mason jar and duct taped the lid shut.

God was not happy about any of it. “I wasn’t ‘hiding out.’”

“What?” Kimo asked.

“In the nebula,” God said. “I wasn’t hiding.”

“I didn’t say you were hiding.”

“The asshole writing this story did, and I don’t appreciate the miscategorization.”

“What in the hell are you babbling about now?”

“Never mind, it doesn’t matter,” God grumbled, then added as a bitter-sounding afterthought, “Omniscience sucks.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 998: The Carina Nebula

The Carina Nebula originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, July/August 2023.

Includes a few A-grade curses.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:31 — 64.4MB)

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The Carina Nebula

By Kelsey Hutton

I heard the soft shit shit shit just when I’d almost floated past the blue hatch door that led into some kind of storage room. I had to laugh. I mean, how many times have I said that? Plus the voice sounded older, a woman’s, and I love when adults just say what they mean, instead of carefully guarding every word around “the kids.”

I wasn’t really doing much, just wandering through some of the ship’s back tunnels. So I reached out right before momentum took me past the hatch and grabbed onto the cool metal. I pulled myself back and shook my head side to side a little to clear away my clouds of dark hair.

We were in zero G these days, and like, I knew that tying my hair back was probably the smarter decision when zooming around, but whatever. My hair was kinda curly, kinda wavey, with some straight pieces thrown in for kicks. The sculptures it made floating around my head was probably my best feature, so hair ties be damned. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 997: Sanctuary, Part 2 of 2

“Sanctuary” first appeared in Kyanite Press, Winter 2020

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:04 — 61.0MB)

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Show Notes

Don’t miss “Sanctuary, Part 1”

Sanctuary (Part 2)

by Alexis Ames

3.

Eilan slept for thirteen uneventful hours while I sat at the helm and wondered if it was possible for an android to die of boredom. I had the autopilot off because at least flying the ship gave me a task to focus on, though as tasks went, it was far from challenging. This area of space was truly a void—there weren’t even micrometeoroid clouds to avoid, or random space junk to scan and analyze. Two more weeks of this—I wasn’t sure how I was going to survive. I knew that I would, of course. It was just going to be an incredibly painful two weeks.

And then, at the end of it, I would be free. My criminal record would be expunged, and I would be released from the clutches of Veduvis Authority, free at last to return home and resume the life I had started all those years ago.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 996: Sanctuary, Part 1 of 2

“Sanctuary” first appeared in Kyanite Press, Winter 2020

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:33 — 47.9MB)

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Sanctuary (Part 1)

by Alexis Ames

1.

The king of the galaxy died the day before the biggest holiday of the year, and six hours before I was supposed to be on a shuttle home. It was lousy, rotten timing, and I reflected that I should’ve done as Cecil said and called in sick, telling my superiors that I picked up a virus from the case we worked last week and taken the dawn shuttle instead of the evening one. But I knew it would’ve caused me more problems than it was worth, namely because the director would want to put me through a battery of tests when I returned to make sure I couldn’t pass the “virus” on to any of the computers or other sensitive equipment at the station.

I should’ve done it anyway, because if I had, I wouldn’t be sitting here in the director’s office, listening as she handed me an assignment that almost certainly meant I wouldn’t be returning home for the foreseeable future. Cecil and Halvor both were going to kill me.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 989: Holding Patterns

Escape Pod 989: Holding Patterns is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:31 — 50.6MB)

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Holding Patterns

By Jennifer Hudak

I dream about the trees sometimes. I think we all do, even though none of my generation were alive when the forest was actually growing. We don’t dream about them the way they are now—stunted and dormant—but the way they were when the first colonists arrived here on Ariadne: pale smooth trunks growing straight and true, latticed with ropy, red-leafed vines that cradled the heavy fruit dangling off the branches. The canopy towering dozens of meters overhead, everything quiet and lush and smelling of damp. People say that back then, you could watch the trees growing in real time, budding branches and unfurling leaves. Even in the vids and holos they show us in school, the trees look so sturdy, so real—so permanent—that you could forgive someone for believing that they’d grow forever.

But the trees here want something we can’t give them—some murmur of information, an arboreal greeting, the plant equivalent of a rough hug and a shouted Hello! Good to see you! They’re waiting for something that will never happen.

Just like us. (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 984: Imperial (Flashback Friday)

Imperial originally appeared in Monolith 6 and on Escape Pod episode 1 on May 12, 2005.

Rated R. Contains profanity, sexual content, politics, and sarcasm.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:05 — 62.4MB)

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Show Notes

Jonathan Sullivan: https://erincairns.com/ErinCairns/About/Press+Kit

Serah Eley: https://escapepod.org/people/serah-eley/

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

Alasdair Stuart: https://pseudopod.org/people/alasdair-stuart/

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosencrantz_and_Guildenstern_Are_Dead

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3FFfmWvyAk

Silent Album
https://www.isthiswhatwewant.com/

Hot Singles In Your Area
https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/hot-singles-in-your-area-jordan-shiveley/7704976?ean=9781800183414

Imperial

By Jonathon Sullivan

(Excerpt)

Dennis blinked through his dripping eyelashes at the irresistible abomination seated on the blue-green grass two meters in front of him. The Pig smiled her bio-engineered leopard-smile at him and kept her right hand prominently in contact with the stun-gun at her hip.

He stared, too choked with shock, desire and tepid river water to speak. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 982: Twilight

Escape Pod 982: Twilight is an Escape Pod original.

Includes themes of grief, loss, isolation, and mental health.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:03 — 34.9MB)

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Twilight

By Lilly Harper

Like the tide going out, the dream slipped between her toes and carried with it the smell of petrichor and the sound of birdsong. Even without knowing she was dreaming, she had known she was waking up; the subliminal chatter of her body, quietly running its routine checksums, the logs spooling their idiot monologue into her working memory. First came a few moments of groggy confusion and then, like an iron hand gripping her cognitive architecture, a kind of clarity that tasted like resentment and reminded her of Monday mornings.

Waking up always felt like this. Packed down as she was, crammed into a processor too small to carry her like a spring wound tight, waking up wasn’t a continuous transformation so much as a discrete toggle. Like a light switch. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 977: Reflected in Mirrored Skies (Part 2 of 2)

“Reflected in Mirrored Skies” was published by Compelling Science Fiction (Special Kickstarter Companion issue Nov. 6, 2018)

Mentions of sexual assault

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:16 — 42.0MB)

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Reflected in Mirrored Skies

by Deborah L. Davitt

Mariana stood in the security room, listening to Tesar and Bitna Park-Lee speak to the head of security. Ephraim Novak was a tall man with a surprisingly weathered face. “You’re saying that all the video and logs from the entire station were deleted between 17:00 and 19:00? Down to who opened which doors?” Tesar asked incredulously.

“Whoever did it, clearly didn’t want their route discernible through omission. And probably easier just to do a full sweep of the files,” Novak replied, shaking his head.

“Are the files recoverable?” Bitna asked in her precise manner. “Surely you have ways of reconstituting lost data.”

Novak shook his head again. “They knew what they were doing. The data’s gone.”

“Which implies that it would be a member of your staff, given that whoever did it also got into your secure system.” Tesar bit off the ends of his words.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 976: Reflected in Mirrored Skies (Part 1 of 2)

“Reflected in Mirrored Skies” was published by Compelling Science Fiction (Special Kickstarter Companion issue Nov. 6, 2018)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:36 — 35.6MB)

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Reflected in Mirrored Skies

by Deborah L. Davitt

Above them, stars; below, the endless roil of leaden clouds that engulfed Venus from pole to pole. Mariana Delahaye watched the radar screen and eyed the autopilot’s trajectory. Beside her, her co-pilot had his feet up on the console. “Relax,” Oluwa Jelani told her. “The computer’s done the flying for months. It’ll handle the docking maneuvers, too.” He laced his hands behind his head. “I don’t get why they need us along for these hauls.”

Mariana shrugged, overriding the autopilot. She loved the feel of the ship, the sensation of wind transmitting into her hands through the controls. She’d flown a C-17 Globemaster back on Earth. She missed it. Her current assignment felt like a glorified trucking gig. “The human mind, Oluwa,” she reminded him, “is our best backup. We’re here to ensure that computer error doesn’t cost thousands of lives.”

(Continue Reading…)

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