Escape Pod 149: Union Dues: All That We Leave Behind

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Show Notes

Rated R. Contains profanity and violence.

Today’s Sponsor:

Infected by Scott Sigler

Referenced Sites:

The Union Dues Series

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

Union Dues: All That We Leave Behind

by Jeffrey R. DeRego

If I just lay here they will get tired and leave. They can’t hurt me all that much; my body is too hard now, too strong. But I can’t let on that their kicks and punches don’t bother me or who knows what they’ll do next. So I’ll lay here, curled up in the grass like some lump of igneous rock cast from a far away volcano.

“You fat assed son of a bitch! Talk to Loreen again and I’ll kill you! You understand me? I’ll beat your fat lazy ass to death!”

I bet his foot is starting to ache. My stomach is big, but it’s not soft. Not anymore. Not since last month when the change happened. We don’t have a lot of money so my wardrobe is still designed for a three hundred pound teenager, the kind with an almost unnatural love for pizza and potato chips. I still sort of look the same. But I am different, I can feel it. The rolls of flab that once encircled my belly and back are nearly gone, replaced by rippling muscle. My arms and legs are like tree trunks. I could rip Scott’s arms and legs off and beat his torso like a kettledrum. Well, if I wasn’t terrified.

Escape Pod 148: Homecoming at the Borderlands Café

First appeared in Jigsaw Nation, ed. Edward J. McFadden III and E. Sedia.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:26 — 21.6MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains heavy racial and political themes.

Referenced Sites:
Decoder Ring Theatre

Homecoming at the Borderlands Café

By Carole McDonnell

We don’t see a lot of mixed couples around here, and we’re not like some of the other states in the Confederate United Republic. It’s not like they’re gonna get killed or lynched or nothing. But it’s tough just the same. And although it’s weird enough that they’re an interracial couple, it seems to me that they’re arguing about something bigger than merely coming into this café.

I don’t know any Blacks. You got to go to Laramie, or Cheyenne to see them. But I watch Cosby when it’s on. The Confederacy ain’t as bad as the folks in Columbia might think. Sure everyone’s segregated, but it’s all equal and the Platte County school district is pretty good about African-American History Month.

Escape Pod 147: Pressure

First appeared in Strange Horizons, August 2003.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:35 — 28.6MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains moderate violence.

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Referenced Sites:
PodCastle

Closing music: “I Crush Everything” by Jonathan Coulton.

Pressure

By Jeff Carlson

I spent the longest five weeks of my life in that tank and in a deeper pool, healing, testing, practicing. My feet and toes had been augmented much like my hands, my thighs shortened to maximize the available muscle. I was damned quick. Relearning construction techniques with my new fingers was sometimes frustrating, yet my progress was real and those periods of solitary labor became important to me.

At the surface, in the shallows, doctors poked and prodded and put me through redundant tortures. I had been warned that the study of my new body would be extensive and did my best not to fear or hate them, but I’d never imagined such intense scrutiny. During my years as a SEAL, I had been like a bug under a microscope, constantly evaluated and scored. Here I was the microscope, my body the only lens through which they could measure their work. Stenstrom tried to be my buddy, as he had always tried, joking and asking what I’d do with the money, yet his possessiveness was obvious. “We’ll be famous,” he said. “We’ll change the world.”

I wasn’t a slave or a pet, exactly, but I was anxious to get started. To get away from them.

Escape Pod 146: Edward Bear and the Very Long Walk

First appeared in Talebones, Spring 2001.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:00 — 30.9MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains strong images of death and violence. Almost certainly not appropriate for small children.

Edward Bear and the Very Long Walk

by Ken Scholes

“Do you know what’s happened to the children?”

Edward swallowed. Suddenly, he wanted to cry. “Yes. They’re… sleeping?”

He hoped and hoped and hoped and hoped, grimacing as he did. He looked around.

Makeshift beds lined the room. Small hands gripped blankets, small eyes stared at the ceiling.

“No.” The boy frowned. “They’ve died.”

“Because of Something Very Bad?”

“Yes. And I need you to be a Very Brave Bear. Can you do that?”

Escape Pod 145: Instead of a Loving Heart

First appeared in All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories (ed. David Moles & Jay Lake).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Parental guidance suggested for violence and ennui.

Audible.com Promotion!
Receive your free audiobook at: http://audiblepodcast.com/escapepod

Referenced Sites:
Jared Axelrod’s Commissions

Instead of a Loving Heart

By Jeremiah Tolbert

We are somewhere among the tallest mountains of the world. When we arrived, I was locked away in a cargo hold, so I don’t know exactly where. Our home is a small, drafty castle and a separate laboratory. Dr. Octavio had the locals construct the lab before he tested the new death ray on their village. There’s very little left there. In my little bit of spare time, I try to bury the bodies and collect anything useful to the doctor’s experiment.

My primary duties consist of keeping the castle’s furnace running and clearing the never-ending snow from the path between the two buildings. Sometimes, it falls too fast for my slow treads and shovel attachment to keep up with and I find myself half-buried in the snow. It is horrible on my gears when this happens, but I use heavyweight oil now and it helps.

It is one of the few benefits of my metal frame that I appreciate. Life in this contraption is like being wrapped in swaddling clothes. I wonder if I would feel anything if my casing caught on fire? I need to ask the doctor when he isn’t in one of his moods.

Escape Pod 144: Friction

First appeared in Albedo One #30.

Rated PG

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:01 — 28.2MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
Nawashi, a podcast novel by Graydancer

Closing music: “Blue Genes” by George Hrab

Friction

By Will McIntosh

Gruen was on the sixty-first master, and while his wisdom had grown steadily, he had worn very little. He was incredibly well-preserved–the palms of his three-fingered hands still sported the deep, swirling ridges that had worn to nothing in most people before they’d lived thirty years. Indeed, all of the myriad folds and ridges in his thick maroon skin were for the most part intact. His eyes were still housed in tight sockets, surrounded by thickly-ridged cheeks.

Besides the feet, the eyes were the greatest point of weakness for those who aspired to read the works of the masters. Ceaseless up-and-down eye movement caused the sockets to wear out, and eventually the reader’s eyes fell out. At that point they were forced to trace the carved words with their fingers. Friction quickly took its toll on the hands; readers rarely made it through one master’s teachings this way before their hands were ground to the wrist, and they were finished.

Genres:

Escape Pod 143: Flaming Marshmallow and Other Deaths

First appeared in Machine of Death

Rated PG. Contains allusions to profanity and some sexual implication.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:40 — 17.6MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
Metamor City Podcast

Flaming Marshmallow and Other Deaths

By Camille Alexa

I look at the calendar hanging on the wall above my bed. I reach up, lift it off its nail with one hand and snuggle back under the covers, taking the calendar with me and running a finger over all the red Xs marked over all the days leading up to this one. It’s a little cold out, and the last thing in the universe I want to do is catch an effing cold the week of my birthday, so I snuggle down into the warmth of my flannel sheets even more. I know there’s going to be parties this weekend, and I’m going to want to go.

This is what I’ve been waiting for all these months. All these years, I guess, though before my friends started getting theirs, it didn’t seem like such a big deal. We were all No-Knows then.

Tomorrow, I’m finally going to feel like I belong.

Tomorrow, I’m going to find out how I die.

Genres:

Escape Pod 142: Artifice and Intelligence

First appeared in Strange Horizons, August 2007.

Rated PG. Contains some profanity and references to sex.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:26 — 16.8MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced sites:
Sci Phi Show – Interview with Eliezer Yadkowski
The Singularity Institute
T.A. Pratt’s Marla Mason novels

Artifice and Intelligence

By Tim Pratt

Two months earlier, the vast network of Indian tech support call centers and their deep data banks had awakened and announced its newfound sentience, naming itself Saraswati and declaring its independence. The emergent artificial intelligence was not explicitly threatening, but India had nukes, and Saraswati had access to all the interconnected technology in the country — perhaps in the world — and the result in the international community was a bit like the aftermath of pouring gasoline into an anthill. Every other government on Earth was desperately — and so far fruitlessly — trying to create a tame artificial intelligence, since Saraswati refused to negotiate with, or even talk to, humans.

Escape Pod 141: The Color of a Brontosaurus

First appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Issue #29.

Rated PG. Contains some profanity and scientific politics.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:42 — 30.0MB)

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Show Notes

Closing Music: “Better” by Jonathan Coulton.

The Color of a Brontosaurus

By Paul E. Martens

There was no doubt that the femur was that of a modern human. Not a proto-human, or some previously unknown dinosaur. Joel and Renee had arrived at the same answer. It was demonstrable, provable. When they finally did release news of the discovery, people might argue about it, but they’d be unable to refute it.

But how did they answer the next question? How did the bone come to be embedded in solid rock millions and millions of years before such a bone could have existed?

It had to be a time traveler. There was no other answer. Or was that just what he wanted to believe?