Posts Tagged ‘apocalypse’

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Escape Pod 1011: Once Upon a Planet

Once Upon a Planet originally appeared in Augur Magazine, Issue 7.1 – August 2024.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:00 — 34.8MB)

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Once Upon a Planet

By Kelsey Hutton

Once upon a time, there were three boring, totally normal planets lazily circling their sun.

One was too hot. It spewed out venomous flames like a firebreather with something pokey stuck in her teeth—dangerously unpredictable, even for the daring.

One was too cold. It was so cold even the ghosts got trapped there, growing more and more sluggish as their memories turned to ice. The lucky ones escaped off-planet into the relatively warm, radioactive embrace of space before they completely lost what made them cling to this mortal coil in the first place.

The last one, as they say, was juuuuuuuuuust right. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1001: Death by Pink in the Lollipop Apocalypse

Escape Pod 1001: Death by Pink in the Lollipop Apocalypse is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:03 — 54.1MB)

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Death by Pink in the Lollipop Apocalypse

By Ryan Cole

In the dark of her bed, curled up in her sheets, Susie tried to hide from the next few days and the reckoning they’d bring: of prom and graduation and the dozens of goodbyes she’d have to force herself to say, wishing she could follow. No college escape. Her applications rejected. Not to mention that she’d been bragging for months—to Piper and all her other refugee friends—about the fake acceptance letter from Delaware State, and the phony full-ride, and the lie that she’d be rooming with Piper in the fall, just like they’d always wanted, two peas in a pod.

Which made her want to run—like Dad always did. But she couldn’t be like him. Couldn’t leave when his only child needed him most. When the city they’d fled—along with half a million others—was buried in a thick layer of saccharine crust. A crust that devoured every street, every house, every skyscraper standing like a hollowed-out lollipop, that only kept spreading, kept crushing every straggler that lay in its path, as relentless as a river and impenetrable as stone. (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…)

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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…)

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Escape Pod 959: This Little War of Ours

Escape Pod 959: This Little War of Ours is an Escape Pod original.

Brief mentions of suicide and suicidal ideation, and an apocalypse setting.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:02 — 43.1MB)

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This Little War of Ours

By Arden Baker

 

SECURE PRIORITY COMMUNIQUE

distribution SOLITAIRE, keyword MASQUERADE, source PENTACLE

FROM: TRIPLE INTENT

TO: ASPHODEL

BEGIN CONTENT

 

Even if you’re my enemy, I’m glad to hear from you. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 869: Excuse Me, This Is My Apocalypse

Escape Pod 869: Excuse Me, This Is My Apocalypse is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:51 — 71.7MB)

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Excuse Me, This Is My Apocalypse

by Amy Johnson

It was a glorious day when she finally made it to the beach and fell to her knees, into sand unexpectedly soft and warm, and beheld the devastation. The sun smiled and the air danced with spindrift and in the water lay broken shipping cranes, gathered by the ocean’s currents into a jumbled breakwater, one atop another, too many pieces to know how many cranes had once stood intact. In their harbor bobbed the hulls of overturned ships, still buoyant with air long dead, enormous stepping stones, their way now lost.

She had tried to prepare herself for the desolation of this moment. But her preparations hadn’t worked. They never did. With each new discovery of emptiness and destruction, the truth of her aloneness hit her fresh. For as far as her eyes could see, there was no one. And there would be no one, no human, at least, to leave footprints on this sand, to taste the ocean’s salt in their mouth, no one but her. She let her anger, stiff and distant and enormous, unfurl, welcomed its magnificent warmth. She was the last of her kind—

Was that a guy in a bright orange t-shirt?

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 751: More Than Simple Steel

Escape Pod 751: More Than Simple Steel is an Escape Pod original.

A few curses

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:39 — 48.1MB)

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More Than Simple Steel

By Aimee Ogden

Micah misses the adults most when he wakes up each morning. Part of him is still waiting for the buzz of an alarm clock and the smell of toaster waffles to coax him up from sleep. But it’s been four years, and there is no mother to nudge him awake.

He sits up on his mattress and scratches crust from his eyes. The bedsheets smell like sweat and grass; is it laundry day today? He’s the closest thing to an adult under the roof of Grand Avenue Elementary, and if he says it’s laundry day, then it will be.

Clothes on, shoes on. Everyone has to wear shoes all the time. That’s the rule, ever since Marco got tetanus last year and they all thought he was going to die. It was the worst sickness they’d seen since the flops cleared out all the adults. Micah doesn’t know what he’ll do when something worse sweeps through.

The door of the teachers’ lounge–he can’t stop thinking of it as the teachers’ lounge, even though there are no teachers here and not much time for lounging–clicks quietly shut behind him. Then he moves down the hallway, opening doors, calling names. “Fabián, garden. Jack, laundry. Vee, babysitting. Carrie, fishing.” (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 729: Gaze of Robot, Gaze of Bird

This story was first published by Clarkesworld Magazine in April, 2019.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:53 — 59.4MB)

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Gaze of Robot, Gaze of Bird

By Eric Schwitzgebel

First, an eye. The camera rose, swiveling on its joint, compiling initial scans of the planetary surface. Second, six wheels on struts, pop-pop, pop-pop, pop-pop, and a platform unfolding between the main body and the eye. Third, an atmospheric taster and wind gauge. Fourth, a robotic arm. The arm emerged holding a fluffy, resilient nanocarbon monkey doll, which it carefully set on the platform.

The monkey doll had no actuators, no servos, no sensors, no cognitive processors. Monkey was, however, quite huggable. Monkey lay on his back on the warm platform, his black bead eyes pointed up toward the stars. He had traveled wadded near J11-L’s core for ninety-five thousand years. His arms, legs, and tail lay open and relaxed for the first time since his hurried manufacture.

J11-L sprouted more eyes, more arms, more gauges – also stabilizers, ears, a scoop, solar panels, soil sensors, magnetic whirligigs. Always, J11-L observed Monkey more closely than anything else, leaning its eyes and gauges in.

J11-L arranged Monkey’s limbs on the platform, gently flexing and massaging the doll. J11-L scooped up a smooth stone from near its left front wheel, brushed it clean, then wedged it under Monkey’s head to serve as a pillow. J11-L stroked and smoothed Monkey’s fur, which was rumpled from the long journey.

“I love you, Monkey,” emitted J11-L, in a sound resembling language. “Will you stay with me while I build a Home?”

Monkey did not reply.
(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 707: Rule of Three (Part 3 of 3)

Rule of Three was first published in Future SF, no. 1, in 2018.

Includes descriptions of human reproduction and sexuality.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:31 — 45.1MB)

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Rule of Three (Part 3 of 3)

By Lawrence M. Schoen

Late in the day Foom laced its fingers with my clone’s and I felt my consciousness pushed aside. Not entirely out, but no longer in control of my doppelganger. There wasn’t the exchange of knowledge and insight that had accompanied this gesture in the past. I followed the alien’s focus, using everything I’d learned in the last few days. I could see what it was doing, but not understand it. “Can you explain what’s happening?” I asked.

“I am crafting what you would call a retrovirus from your double’s cells. Actually, many variations of this retrovirus. If I am successful, one of them will rewrite your gonads and ultimately alter the viability of any spermatozoa they produce. He’ll still produce semen in the normal fashion, but it will be inert for reproductive purposes. No ‘Jing’.”

Foom grinned as it said that last word, lapsing from the Miao tongue into Chinese for an old word from Chinese medicine for ‘sexual energy’ that I must have picked up years ago and long since forgotten. Apparently, it had pulled more than just the one language from me.

“Shooting blanks, as the Americans would say,” I added.

“Thus ensuring the extinction of your species without causing any physical harm to the living.”
(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 551: The Most Absurd Dance at the End of the Worlds

Escape Pod 551: The Most Absurd Dance at the End of the Worlds is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:30 — 32.6MB)

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The Most Absurd Dance at the End of the Worlds

By Holly Heisey

It was the end of the worlds, and Mr. Jamison and I were arguing over peas. Not the mush you get in a cafeteria, but peas that smelled like grasshoppers and summer. Real, in the shell, peas.

Mr. Jamison detached his monocle and peered down at the pea pods on my outstretched hand. He made a huffing sound that poofed his drooping moustache. He looked like a side character in an old John Wayne movie, stuffed into fussy clothes.

“It is an altogether sensible looking vegetable,” he finally said. “But how will they help us to program the Back Button?”

He motioned to the collection of brass pipes and gauges that hulked on the sturdy worktable. Afternoon sunlight slanted from the warehouse windows and gave the Back Button a purposeful glint. If we could figure out what that purpose was, we could save the worlds.

I picked a pod off my hand and held it to the sunlight. “I think this pod is like the shape our worlds are taking now. The brane that contains the one hundred and nineteen realities is stretched thin and long, and our worlds are lined up inside of it.”

(Continue Reading…)

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