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Escape Pod 668: The Harmonic Resonance of Ejiro Anaborhi

The Harmonic Resonance of Ejiro Anaborhi was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF), March 2018

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:50 — 72.1MB)

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The Harmonic Resonance of Ejiro Anaborhi

by Wole Talabi

The spindly, sleek ship hurtled forward at hyperliminal speed, blurring its own intricately patterned design in six dimensions and wrecking the fabric of space–time in its wake. Its captain adjusted the dial on the control panel, accelerating the ship three thousand lightspeed units faster in Planck time. Reality shifted.

The sphere that was chasing the ship matched their maneuver and kept the distance—if it could still be called that—between them, unchanged. The sphere suddenly added an extra-dimensional rotation to its motion and burst ahead with a surge of energy that set off a singularity event behind it. It slammed itself against the ship finally, throwing off gigantic streams of pure energy, and latched on to it with long, spiny hydra-like tendrils that branched into manifold others.

The sphere began to consume the ship in a dazzling display of fractured light and twisted gravity, tendrils reaching into it like the fingers of some monstrous creature seeking sustenance. The ship’s captain, in a panic, condensed every aspect of themself into one place for the first time since they’d first gained super-sentience. They could not let the ship be taken. If the object it carried fell into the hands of the beings that controlled the sphere, every conscious aspect of the universe could become a weapon in their hands. It was better if all was lost; destroyed forever. The object pulsed a thought in agreement with them. They resonated with resolve. This would be the final act of the Great War. It had to be done.
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Escape Pod 630: Midnight Blue (Flashback Friday)

Midnight Blue originally appeared on Escape Pod on August 11, 2011 on episode 305 and was first published in Asimov’s.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:01 — 77.1MB)

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Midnight Blue

By Will McIntosh

He’d never seen a burgundy before.  Kim held it in her lap, tapped it with her finger.  She was probably tapping it to bring attention to it, and Jeff didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of asking to see it, but he really wanted to see it.  Burgundy (Kim had insisted on calling it burgundy red when she showed it at show and tell) was a rare one.  Not as rare as a hot pink Flyer or a viridian Better Looking, but still rare.

A bus roared up, spitting black smoke.  It was the seven bus–the Linden Court bus, not his.  Kids rushed to line up in front of the big yellow doors as the bus hissed to a stop.  A second-grader squealed, shoved a bigger kid with her Partridge Family lunch box because he’d stepped on her foot.  All the younger kids seemed to have Partridge Family lunch boxes this year.

“What did you say it did when you’ve got all three pieces of the charm together?”  Jeff asked Kim.  He said it casually, like he was just making conversation until his bus came.

“It relaxes time,” Kim said.  “When you’re bored you can make time pass quickly, and when you’re having fun you can make time stretch out.”

Jeff nodded, tried to look just interested enough to be polite, but no more.  What must that be like, to make the hour at church fly by?  Or make the school day (except for lunch and recess) pass in an eyeblink?  Jeff wondered how fast or slow you could move things along.  Could you make it seem like you were eating an ice cream sandwich for six hours?  That would be sparkling fine.

“Want to see it?” Kim asked.

“Okay,” Jeff said, holding out his hands too eagerly before he remembered himself.  Kim handed it to him, looking pleased with herself, the dimples on her round face getting a little deeper.

It was smooth as marble, perfectly round, big as a grapefruit and heavy as a bowling ball.  It made Jeff’s heart hammer to hold it.  The rich red, which hinted at purple while still being certainly red, was so beautiful it seemed impossible, so vivid it made his blue shirt seem like a Polaroid photo left in the sun too long.
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Escape Pod 629: An Advanced Reader’s Picture Book of Comparative Cognition

An Advanced Reader’s Picture Book of Comparative Cognition originally appeared in March 2016 as part of the collection The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:44 — 64.3MB)

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Show Notes

Author’s Notes:

For more on consciousness as compression, see:

Maguire, Phil, et al. “Is Consciousness Computable? Quantifying Integrated Information Using Algorithmic Information Theory.” arXiv preprint arXiv:1405.0126 (2014) (available at http://arxiv.org/pdf/1405.0126).

For more on natural nuclear reactor piles, see:

Teper, Igor. “Inconstants of Nature”, Nautilus, January 23, 2014 (available at http://nautil.us/issue/9/time/inconstants-of-nature).

Davis, E. D., C. R. Gould, and E. I. Sharapov. “Oklo reactors and implications for nuclear science.” International Journal of Modern Physics E 23.04 (2014) (available at http://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.4948).

For more on SETI and the Sun’s gravitational lens, see:

Maccone, Claudio. “Interstellar radio links enhanced by exploiting the Sun as a gravitational lens.” Acta Astronautica 68.1 (2011): 76–84 (available at http://www.snolab.ca/public/JournalClub/alex1.pdf).]

An Advanced Reader’s Picture Book of Comparative Cognition

By Ken Liu

My darling, my child, my connoisseur of sesquipedalian words and convoluted ideas and meandering sentences and baroque images, while the sun is asleep and the moon somnambulant, while the stars bathe us in their glow from eons ago and light-years away, while you are comfortably nestled in your blankets and I am hunched over in my chair by your bed, while we are warm and safe and still for the moment in this bubble of incandescent light cast by the pearl held up by the mermaid lamp, you and I, on this planet spinning and hurtling through the frigid darkness of space at dozens of miles per second, let’s read.
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Escape Pod 615: Lonely Robot on a Rocket Ship in Space

Lonely Robot on a Rocket Ship in Space was first published in Cicada Magazine in 2016.

Frank discussion of sexual, gender and body identity; nothing graphic.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:02 — 48.2MB)

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Show Notes

Audio production note: Christopher Cornell has done an amazing and creative job of adapting the visual and formatting elements of Lonely Robot on a Rocket Ship in Space to the audio medium.

That said, there are simply some elements that do not lend themselves to a one-to-one equivalent.

I strongly encourage Escape Pod listeners, then, to not only listen, but also to see the full written story on our website.

In the text, I have changed the section breaks from a hashtag (#) to our logo icon and have taken out the paragraph indents to match our style. Otherwise, however, I have left the unique font and visual elements as A. Merc Rustad sent them to us.

Keep in mind, however, that because this is the Internet, your particular browser may interpret that formatting in myriad ways.

TL;DR: Read the text, too. Your mileage may vary.

-Adam Pracht, Escape Pod audio producer

Lonely Robot on a Rocket Ship in Space

By A. Merc Rustad

Byron scribbled crib notes on his wrist the night before he planned to come out to his dads.

He’d told all his friends he was sick so he would have an excuse to stay home Friday night. It wasn’t like he was lying. His stomach was so knotted he thought he’d puke. But he couldn’t sleep, either. The words burned like he’d used acid instead of a Sharpie.

I’m not scared or confused. It’s who I am.

In the tiniest he could write legibly, he added, Please don’t be mad. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 612: The Sixes, the Wisdom, and the Wasp

Escape Pod 612: The Sixes, the Wisdom, and the Wasp is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:57 — 66.0MB)

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The Sixes, the Wisdom, and the Wasp

By E J Delaney

Fereshteh Nemati was scared.

She knew she was gripping her bow too tightly. She knew she should never ever aim at another person. But it wasn’t bad technique she was thinking of, or breaking her father’s golden rule. It wasn’t even the sight of poor Mr. Heke lying unmoving by his desk.

What bothered Fereshteh most of all was the girl on the opposite side of the classroom: the one standing with arrow notched and back elbow held high, staring at her across the small wooden desks and half-open tidy trays.

That’s me. I’m shooting at me!
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Escape Pod 560: Run

Escape Pod 560: Run is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:04 — 29.6MB)

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Run

By C.R. Hodges

The claxon blares three times: all clear. We file out of the underground shelter and up the serpentine lava tube. Our semi-annual hibernation drill, bureaucratic gibberish for run down to the emergency shelter and hide, is now monthly. I’m all for avoiding nuclear annihilation, but I wish the drills weren’t scheduled so close to lunar sunset.

I jostle my way toward the front of the long line headed for the surface modules. It’s been fourteen Earth days since I’ve talked to my best friend. Sure we could have emailed or texted, even from two-hundred and thirty-nine thousand miles away, but that would be cheating. We’re the Interplanetary Morse Code Club. Sally is President, Earth District; I’m Vice President of Lunar Operations. It’s a small club.

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Escape Pod 552: RedChip BlueChip

“RedChip BlueChip” was originally published in Crossed Genres (June 2015 issue).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:46 — 40.7MB)

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RedChip BlueChip

By Effie Seiberg

The AdChip technician’s rubber-gloved hand was cold on my chin. “Now hold still, Mi-kay-la.”

“It’s Mi-KEE-la,” I grumbled. My mother, leaning on the beige metal door, didn’t look up from her smartpad.

“Right.” He nodded, uncaring. “This is going to sting a bit, but don’t you worry. It’ll be over before you know it.”

He didn’t know how right he was – it would be over soon, once Sivvy found out.

He pushed my chin to the side, exposing my left ear, then swiped an alcohol-infused gauze in the soft area behind the star-shaped earring I’d bent from a paper clip the other day.

“Now, do you want to be BlueChip or RedChip?” He busied himself with the metal tray of instruments sitting next to me on the ugly green table. An enormous syringe-like tool lay there next to two tiny Chips and a graft gun. Both Chips were black – I guess the color names weren’t literal.

“Shouldn’t my papers already tell you that? Haven’t you already decided everything for me?” There were posters on the walls advertising Coke and Pepsi and IBM and Apple and Honda and Toyota. Stuff for each Chip.

My mother finally glanced up. “Mikila, be nice.”

“Oh it’s fine,” he said with plastered-on cheer. “The papers are only for backup, in case you don’t choose. We just want you to be happy!”

“OK, fine. I’ll choose not to have a Chip at all – that’ll make me happy. Can I go now?” I hopped off the green metal table and moved to grab my worn messenger bag.

He moved to block. “Ha ha.” His smile stiffened on his face. “A funny one!”

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Escape Pod 549: The Battaile of the Mudde

Escape Pod 549: The Battaile of the Mudde is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:18 — 48.4MB)

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The Battaile of the Mudde

by Anthony Tardiff

“Dude, can you come over?”

“I’ve got homework,” I said, staring at the mounds of it spread across my desk.

“It’s kind of urgent.”

I sighed and swapped my phone to my other ear. Vincent’s voice had that edge-of-panic quality I’d come to recognize. “Don’t tell me,” I said. “You melted your mom’s toilet again.”

“No.”

“You turned Mrs. Nedry’s gardenias fluorescent again and she called the UFO hotline.”

“No.”

I closed my eyes and groaned. “Your homework ate your dog again.”

“No. Worse.”

Worse? My eyes popped open. It had taken us three hours to hunt down and kill the homework. His mom had not been happy at what the chase had done to the house. She still wondered where Brandy had gone. What could be worse?

“It’s” — Vincent’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper — “a girl.”

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Book Review: “Libertaria: Genesis” by Sabrina Peña Young

It takes a lot of work to create an opera or musical: you need a cohesive plot that can be sung, you need actors, you need costumes, and you need musicians. Award-winning composer went a different way, sourcing the entire world and putting out her opera, Libertaria, virtually. (She talks about the process a bit more in a TedX Buffalo talk.)

But Young has also taken her opera one step further, converting the show into a novel, Libertaria: Genesis, and that’s what I’m going to talk about now.

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Escape Pod 315: Clockwork Fagin

First appeared in Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories

This is considered appropriate for kids 12 and up – it’s a YA story with one murder.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:15:35 — 52.0MB)

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Show Notes

Music by Clockwork Quartet

Clockwork Fagin

By Cory Doctorow

Monty Goldfarb walked into St Agatha’s like he owned the place, a superior look on the half of his face that was still intact, a spring in his step despite his steel left leg. And it wasn’t long before he *did* own the place, taken it over by simple murder and cunning artifice. It wasn’t long before he was my best friend and my master, too, and the master of all St Agatha’s, and didn’t he preside over a *golden* era in the history of that miserable place?

I’ve lived in St Agatha’s for six years, since I was 11 years old, when a reciprocating gear in the Muddy York Hall of Computing took off my right arm at the elbow. My Da had sent me off to Muddy York when Ma died of the consumption. He’d sold me into service of the Computers and I’d thrived in the big city, hadn’t cried, not even once, not even when Master Saunders beat me for playing kick-the-can with the other boys when I was meant to be polishing the brass. I didn’t cry when I lost my arm, nor when the barber-surgeon clamped me off and burned my stump with his medicinal tar.

I’ve seen every kind of boy and girl come to St Aggie’s — swaggering, scared, tough, meek. The burned ones are often the hardest to read, inscrutable beneath their scars. Old Grinder don’t care, though, not one bit. Angry or scared, burned and hobbling or swaggering and full of beans, the first thing he does when new meat turns up on his doorstep is tenderize it a little. That means a good long session with the belt — and Grinder doesn’t care where the strap lands, whole skin or fresh scars, it’s all the same to him — and then a night or two down the hole, where there’s no light and no warmth and nothing for company except for the big hairy Muddy York rats who’ll come and nibble at whatever’s left of you if you manage to fall asleep. It’s the blood, see, it draws them out.

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