Escape Pod 230: Candy Art

First appeared in Asimov’s, December 2002.

Rated PG. Contains family drama and way too much sugar.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:46 — 26.7MB)

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Show Notes

Special Closing Music: “Podsafe Christmas Song” by Jonathan Coulton.

Candy Art

By James Patrick Kelly

“They’re uploads, Jennifer.” When I first met Mel, I thought the sleepy voice was sexy. “How can they move in with us when they’re not anywhere?”

“They bought a puppet to live in,” I say. “Life-sized, nuskin, real speak – top of the line. It’s supposed to be my Christmas present. Bring the family back together for the holidays and live unhappily ever after.”

“A puppet.” A puzzlement glyph pops up at the bottom of my screen. “As in one puppet?”

“It’s a timeshare – you know. They live it serially. Ten hours of him, fourteen of her.”

“Not fifty-fifty?”

“He’s giving her the difference so he can take extra time off for his bass tournament in June.”

Escape Pod 229: Littleblossom Makes a Deal With the Devil

First appeared in Electric Spec in October 2008

Rated PG. Contains violence and political complexity.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:38 — 23.8MB)

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Show Notes

Sponsored by SleepPhones – Pajamas For Your Ears

Littleblossom Makes a Deal With the Devil

By S. Hutson Blount

From beneath the camouflage of kindling on her back came Grandma Thinkbox’s quiet voice. “You should have something hot to drink, child. Do not make yourself sick.”

“Yes, nainai. As soon as I check on Pig.”

After Comrade Liu had been evacuated with the last of the support troops, Xiaoying had rearranged the personality of her assistant battlefield AI into something that suited her better. If she were going to spend months carrying it around, she wasn’t going to listen to it drone on like a party chief. The way it talked now reminded her of her grandmother. The missiles had overlays for their small brains, too, and she’d decorated them with personalities as well. Boredom was a more immediate enemy than Japan.

Escape Pod 228: Everything That Matters

First appeared in Interzone #219

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:13 — 39.3MB)

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Show Notes

Closing music: “Heartache Over Innsmouth” by Norm Sherman.

Sponsored by SleepPhones – Pajamas For Your Ears

Everything That Matters

By Jeff Spock

“I have done over fifteen hundred dives,” I said, and let that sink in. The number was astronomical for a guy my age, even for a professional. “I have done free diving down to eighty meters. I have worked as a commercial diver and in commercial salvage.”

They were listening and nodding, concentrating on me while recording the conversation. “Then you, of all people, should have known better,” said the little guy.

“I did know better!” They were acting like the shark was the victim, not me. “How many people in the whole fucking galaxy could have come up alive, huh? How many would have had the technology and experience and conditioning?”

“If you want our congratulations, you got ’em,” said Odenny. “But we’re more interested in what you were doing.”

Escape Pod 227: His Master’s Voice

First appeared in Interzone, October 2008.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:21 — 29.8MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
PodDisc.com

His Master’s Voice

By Hannu Rajaniemi

Before the concert, we steal the Master’s head. The Necropolis is a dark forest of concrete mushrooms in the blue Antarctic night. We huddle inside the utility fog level attached to the steep southern wall of the ice valley. The cat washes itself with a pink tongue. It reeks of infinite confidence.

“Get ready,” I tell it. “We don’t have all night.”

It gives me a moderately offended look, and dons its armor.

Escape Pod 226: Pirate Solutions

The story first appeared in Fast Ships, Black Sails edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.

Rated ARRRRR

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:00 — 28.9MB)

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Pirate Solutions

by Katherine Sparrow

You could feel their heat. Not a metaphor, I don’t mean that, I mean literally the room grew warmer when they were in it. They were both so powerful. Whenever Anne and Jack (they weren’t named that then, but that’s who they were) strolled into the room you got contact highs from their lust. People who would never make out would find excuses to go to the bathroom together and come back with monster hickies. Everyone always wanted to sit near them because of their heat, and because they always said the thing you wish you’d said but only thought to say a billion blinks later.

When I first joined the Freebooter tech collective Anne and Jack were happy to have another girl in the group, but otherwise they ignored me. I could stare and stare at them all day long, hiding behind my black-rimmed glasses. But then one day Anne looked at me, and then Jack looked too, and we all just sort of fell toward each other. Like gravity. Like magic. Like there was a God.

Escape Pod 225: A Hard Rain at the Fortean Café

This story originally appeared in Aeon #14.

Rated R for violence and language.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:20 — 21.5MB)

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A Hard Rain at the Fortean Café

By Lavie Tidhar

The diner stood off the highway outside a small town optimistically called Hope. Hope was being stuck in the middle of the Northwest and wishing you were someplace, anyplace else. And Hope was also the name on the tag pinned to the dead woman in waitress uniforms that was currently lying against the wall inside the _Barbie-Q Roadhouse_. I had to stop myself from worrying at the connection: looking for patterns when sometimes there are none at all.

I wasn’t worried about Hope (the waitress, not the town). I didn’t get called down here for a murder: shit, murder is an honest-to-God American pastime. Just look at the statistics. No, I got called in because of the Marilyn.

The Marilyn was also dead. All in all, there were five dead people in the Barbie-Q: two waitresses; a balding man who – from his bag full of cheaply-printed catalogues – was some sort of a general salesman; the diner’s manageress; and Marilyn. They had been shot by a machine gun, probably an Uzi. Marilyn’s head left a red smear against the glass of the booth she sat in. She was there alone.

What the hell was a Marilyn doing out here?

Escape Pod 224: The Ghost in the Death Trap

Escape Pod 224: The Ghost in the Death Trap is an Escape Pod original.

Rated PG for some violence and language.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:31 — 27.9MB)

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Show Notes

Editor’s note:  this is a sequel to EP007.  Listen to it here.

The Ghost in the Death Trap

By Marjorie James

Flies buzzed around the edges of the huge stone block, gathering at the rivulets of blood that ran down to the floor. A bit of what looked like it might be intestine hung off one corner, drawing special attention. It was a testament to the force of the collision that fragments of bone and tissue were scattered all the way down the passage, some even wedged in the carvings in the stone walls. Two men surveyed the scene with dismay.

“See? And this just keeps happening. It’s getting so we can’t get anything done around here,” said the taller of the two, a grey-haired man with red eyes and a patchy beard.

The other man, younger but not precisely young, hauled himself up on top of the block and examined the mechanism. “This bar’s been sliced right through.” He looked back down at his client. “You say this was a poltergeist?”

T-shirts now available!

We are happy to announce that preorders are now being taken for Escape Pod, PodCastle, and Pseudopod t-shirts — nice full color, durable ones, to be shipped in time for Christmas at the latest.

Order now from PodDisc.com

No polos or coffee mugs yet. Maybe next time. Thanks very much for all your continued patience and support, from all of us at Escape Artists!

Escape Pod 223: The Uncanny Valley

Originally appeared in the Polyphony 6 anthology.

Rated R

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:55 — 38.4MB)

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The Uncanny Valley

By Nick Mamatas

The trouble with knowing everything there is to know, Stephanie Dowling decided instantly, because that’s how clever she was, was that when there was something unknown out there, she had nobody to consult.

And there was something unknown out there, nibbling away at the edge of the economy, and screwing with the Cottrell-Cockshot tatonnements sufficiently that there’d be problems. Shortages of essentials: power cells and answer boxes. Ridiculous surpluses of nonsense like chrome and diamonds. She could tell because the bride was coughing between her lines and the donkey she rode on suddenly looked ill. It would be just like … wossname … that old thing. Capitalism. Till she fixed it anyway.

Wossname?

Escape Pod 222: Infestation

Originally appeared in By Blood We Live edited by John Joseph Adams

Rated R for violence and very different vampires.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:26 — 31.2MB)

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Infestation

By Garth Nix

They were the usual motley collection of freelance vampire hunters. Two men, wearing combinations of jungle camouflage and leather. Two women, one almost indistinguishable from the men though with a little more style in her leather armour accessories, and the other looking like she was about to assault the south face of a serious mountain. Only her mouth was visible, a small oval of flesh not covered by balaclava, mirror shades, climbing helmet and hood.

They had the usual weapons: four or five short wooden stakes in belt loops; snap-holstered handguns of various calibers, all doubtless chambered with Wood-N-Death® low-velocity timber-tipped rounds; big silver-edged bowie or other hunting knife, worn on the hip or strapped to a boot; and crystal vials of holy water hung like small grenades on pocket loops.

Protection, likewise, tick the usual boxes. Leather neck and wrist guards; leather and woven-wire reinforced chaps and shoulder pauldrons over the camo; leather gloves with metal knuckle plates; Army or climbing helmets.