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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 981: Joy

“Joy” was previously published in Interzone Digital (June 2023)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:15 — 39.3MB)

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Joy

by Dale Smith

Joy knelt on the promenade, shifting the rifle into her shoulder to get a steadier shot. She did her best to ignore the waves crashing against the seawall behind her. She had at least another thirty minutes before it was breached, and the saltwater flooded the seafront again. There was less and less time between high and low tide, the sea creeping closer with every passing month: some of the sand underneath her knee was still damp. It would leech the warmth from the joint, aggravate her arthritis and slow her down when there was something she needed to escape from. It might be an acceptable way for her to die, except that now she had foreseen it so it wouldn’t count. Not when she could easily do something about it. She shifted her knee onto drier ground and didn’t take her eye from the rifle sights.

The drone appeared as a little black dot: not one of the bigger ones, but maybe enough to keep her going for another couple of weeks. Last year they’d still been sending them in flocks of thirty or forty, but they seemed to have realised any idiot could wing at least one in a flock that size. Now they usually flew alone. Harder to hit, but in a way it was better: they’d sold their customers twenty-four hour delivery, and the fastest way to Ireland from the warehouses in Denmark was over what they still sneeringly called the former United Kingdom. Until they found a way to increase their range, speed or defences, they’d keep coming, regular as clockwork.

She took aim carefully.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 980: Peace by Piece

Escape Pod 980: Peace by Piece is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:25 — 34.0MB)

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Show Notes

Erin Cairns

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

Adam Pracht

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

Alasdair Stuart

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

A Man Falls Into A Hole: A Meditation on Grace

https://ceciliairene.wordpress.com/2016/03/05/a-man-falls-into-a-hole-a-meditation-on-grace/

Void Merch

https://voidmerch.threadless.com/collections/escape-artists-inc-x-voidmerch-1

Hot Singles In Your Area

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

Peace by Piece

By Erin Cairns

Frank thought all the battle-drones had been deactivated. Certainly, none of them had ever looked around with curious little twitches of their front-facing cameras before. This one whirred and clicked like an anxious bird, trying to find focus through a chipped and cloudy lens.

“Is the war over?” it asked.

Frank set aside his screwdriver. “It’s been over for a long time.”

“Oh,” the drone said. “What happens now?”

“Well, I was about to strip you for materials.” (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 979: Steadyboi After the Apocalypse

“Steadyboi After the Apocalypse” first appeared in the collection Friends For Robots: Stories by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (Robot Dinosaur Press, 2022)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:32 — 45.2MB)

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Steadyboi After the Apocalypse

by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

You trudge through another wasteland town, sticking to the narrow roads, trying not to make the potholes deeper or the dust clouds thicker, but it’s hard when you’re a hulking robot built for a war long gone. You sheared off your guns and dislocated your laser fuses, dumped your ammo stores in a bog, and snapped the various killing blades into nubs.

People don’t believe your painted chassis.

You spend a lot of your energy gleaned from solar panels on scrubbing mud and rust off so the English letters are legible. You don’t have a way to speak, and when you gesture with your blocky hands (made to crush and punch and smash) people think you’re violent. So you grind your slow, plodding way deeper into the wastes. You can’t help going through towns: your core programming guidance system overrules any detours. You were made to confront people, even if you don’t want to cause harm.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 978: Oak Hill Lane

Escape Pod 978: Oak Hill Lane is an Escape Pod original.

Includes minor violence, homophobia, and swears.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:20 — 60.0MB)

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Oak Hill Lane

By Alasdair Stuart

The day the world ended, Scotch picked a fight. Not that there was much choice. Two fellow Canary Detailers, heads full of redtop bigotry and guts full of Tesco beer, had jumped Scotch’s work partner Billy the previous week and put him in the Infirmary. Scotch was next. It was just maths. Very stupid maths. So, behind the bike sheds at the University none of them could afford to attend but all of them were good enough to clean, Scotch forced the issue.

Honestly, Scotch had rushed the issue; they let their guard down. “The readiness is all” becoming “Oh for fuck’s sake.” It was such schoolyard bollocks too. The bike sheds! The bike sheds for fuck’s sake! Scotch was only marginally surprised no one was making out back there. God knows they had a few times. But no, no such luck. Just clumsy alcohol punches and the angry relentless wave of hormones, homophobia, and homogenous men trying to pound the world into a shape whose familiarity didn’t terrify them. This wasn’t their first time behind the bike sheds either. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

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…)

Genres: ,

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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Escape Pod 975: Don Ysidro (Flashback Friday)

Don Ysidro first appeared in Polyphony 3, October 2003.

Includes death rituals with possible disturbing imagery.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:54 — 27.8MB)

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Show Notes

Evo Terra’s “The End”

The Fiction Podcast Preservation Project

Don Ysidro (Excerpt)

By Bruce Holland Rogers

On that last morning, anyone who came to visit me could see that I was dying. I knew it myself. As if I had cotton in my ears, I heard the voice of don Leandro saying to my wife, “Dona Susana, I think it is time to fetch the priest,” and I thought, yes, it’s time. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 974: Once Abandoned

Escape Pod 974: Once Abandoned is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:18 — 46.2MB)

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Once Abandoned

By A.P. Hawkins

Sappel whistled as he walked to the construction site, the sound echoing off nearby buildings in a muffled way. It was early spring, and the city was bursting with the vibrant green of new growth. Wild edibles sprouted from rooftops like tufts of hair. Wildflowers and herbs crowded ledges beneath every window. Vines crawled over walls, buds promising fruit come summer.

Out of all the buildings in the city, only the new one was bare. Its fresh grey concrete was harsh, unnatural, sticking out like a sore thumb from the green city and the wild country that surrounded it.

But it wouldn’t be bare for much longer. They’d had a good, hard rain last night, which meant the substrate the builders had left behind would be perfectly conditioned for planting. Sappel kept whistling, repeating his song’s refrain. (Continue Reading…)

Escape Pod 973: Forever the Forest

“Forever the Forest” was first published in “Life Beyond Us: An Original Anthology of SF Stories and Science Essays” (April 2023)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:26 — 51.9MB)

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Forever the Forest

by Simone Heller

It is known that the Rootless are only ever leaving. Always moving on, never embracing soil long enough for connection. A life tumbled and tossed, and if it touches ours, it is only by chance, and ill chance more often than not.

But you came, in a tumble and a glorious blaze, by intention and by ill chance.

The night of your arrival was almost my undoing. You rode an incandescent gust tearing into our rows, escorted by a rain of hot metal. The ground rippled once with your impact, outward and onward, quicker than the fungal network could warn us. When the air stilled and the Conversation erupted in bursts of pain! and fire!, no-one knew what had crashed down on us. We sucked moisture from the deep, made the lesser plants close their ranks and smother the flames, and we calmed the Conversation with memories of renewal and regrowth.

You had plummeted from the sky, the fungal network relayed, as the filament reached out again to take hold of the large swath of churned and scorched soil, of everything that lay fallen and ready to decompose. Our rootscape expanded anew, tasting the damage and the altered lay of the land. But one blank spot persisted.

(Continue Reading…)