Posts Tagged ‘death’

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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 1009: The Combat Pilot’s Dictionary

The Combat Pilot’s Dictionary was originally published in Aurealis #167, Febuary 2024.

Wartime action and injury.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:32 — 43.8MB)

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The Combat Pilot’s Dictionary

By Arden Baker

Boot

Rookie pilot. See also – nugget.

You called us ‘boots’ when we turned up to the flight deck that first morning I laid eyes on you.

The halogen lighting shone down onto the makeshift parade ground with a harsh insistence matched only by your loud drill calls.

You looked the part. Milspec features matched with an impeccably pressed grey uniform. Hair shorn close to the scalp to fit the Z94-OptiGuard Quiklok Aerospace Aviation Helmet that you wore in combat. Broad shoulders and piercing eyes. Tall and built like a true Martian. Rust in your blood. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1004: The Girl Who Came Before

Escape Pod 1004: The Girl Who Came Before is an Escape Pod original.

Child death and disease; grief.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:58 — 41.6MB)

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The Girl Who Came Before

By David von Allmen

When me and my family pulled into our driveway, my five best friends were waiting in our front yard, waving glittery poster-board signs that read “Welcome Home Sam!!!” and jumping around with full-on 13 year-old girl dorkiness.

It should have made me happy.

And it did. For the most part. It was all I’d wanted for the last year: to hang out with my friends somewhere other than a hospital room and go to school and talk without an oxygen tube in my nose.

But they weren’t my friends. Not really. They were her friends. The old Sam, the girl my body had been cloned from, the girl whose memories had been printed onto my brain. The girl whose life I was now supposed to live. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1003: Billionaire’s Tears

Escape Pod 1003: Billionaire’s Tears is an Escape Pod original.

Includes cursing, death by communicable disease (albeit not by the usual means).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:45 — 48.2MB)

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Billionaire’s Tears

By Vanessa Ricci-Thode

I wake up to the sound of screaming, and know I’m going to die.

I shoot out of bed, calling for my mother. First thing I’ve spoken clearly in two days.

“Maria!” My mother bursts into my room. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

“S-sorry, Mamma,” I whisper, frantically searching for the right syllables so I don’t trip over them and give it all away. I can’t let Mamma suspect I’m dying—or how soon it’ll happen. “Nightmares.”

Mamma’s smile is sad. The world’s finally getting better, but not for everyone. For us, still struggling, it’s like it’s only getting worse. Everyone in the family has been having nightmares. But when Mamma accepts my explanation and doesn’t seem bothered by the screaming that surrounds us and has not stopped, to me, anyway, that’s when I know. I have a week tops if I’m lucky. (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 969: Code Switching (Part 4 of 4)

Code Switching originally appeared in If Wishes Were Obfuscation Codes and Other Stories – September 12, 2023.

Contains racism, war, and grade-A cursing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:38 — 56.3MB)

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Code Switching (Part 4 of 4)

By Malon Edwards

(…continued from Part 3)

  1. THIS IS THE TRUTELL

MICHAËLLE-ANNABELLE FEAT. JEAN-MICHEL

 

I strap into my rig, take a really big swig from my hydration dispenser tube I call The Ultra Black Vig, and settle back to begin this all-night white-hat gig.

At first, I decide to do this like the Stig, but instead I shake awake my lightbox, pull on my knee-high fuzzy socks, and momentarily disable my sigTell locks. This is my double-dog dare for Saffron Sutton to try and hack this whitefox. She and I have been doing this since the first day of SSI hacker sprints, which always takes place on the vernal equinox. Usually, I tell her she better kick rocks because my sigTell is damn well capable of delivering emotional shocks along her TruTell stalks all the way back to those frilly frocks she designs and thoroughly maligns (although, she would say signs) with a matte black gingham fox.

Now, watch me as I disregard all the clocks and enter the susso-sphere where the only thing I see is multicolored sigTell stalks everywhere. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 968: Code Switching (Part 3 of 4)

Code Switching originally appeared in If Wishes Were Obfuscation Codes and Other Stories – September 12, 2023.

Contains racism, war, and grade-A cursing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:29 — 53.3MB)

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Code Switching (Part 3 of 4)

By Malon Edwards

(…Continued from Part 2)

 

  1. A SWEET-ASS HELICOPTER AND TEN STATER STRANGERS?

JEAN-MICHEL FEAT. THE NAUGHTY NINETY-DAY FANDANGO

 

I’m feelin’ this Bell 525 Relentless like Ellen Gilchrist playin’ bid whist wit her redheaded MILF temptress. She’s a proper drawers dropper chopper wit no love for the paupers. Her black chrome exterior makes me want to chill in her eighty-eight-square-foot cabin interior until homo erectus becomes superior.

And I’m not the only one.

Sittin’ wit me are ten Stater strangers who fear no danger because of the two exo-fighters flankin’ us as we drink an’ cuss, comforted by their protection against the Sovereign State of Chicago’s skanky trust.

Listen to me. Talkin’ like how a real Stater must.

Three of these girls might be smilin’ true, but on their faces you can see fear of Electric Resurrection, too. It’s a look all eleven of us have, but we play it cool—or at least try to appear to. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 967: Code Switching (Part 2 of 4)

Code Switching originally appeared in If Wishes Were Obfuscation Codes and Other Stories – September 12, 2023.

Contains racism, war, and grade-A cursing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:38 — 57.6MB)

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Code Switching (Part 2 of 4)

By Malon Edwards

(…Continued from Part 1)

  1. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT PERFORMANCE OUTPUT

JEAN-MICHEL FEAT. KINSLEY CHASE

 

Lòske jounalis sa yo gade m—

Hold up. Let me say that again. I’ll wait. Y’all go grab y’alls paper an’ pen.

When these Stater journos look at me, they don’t juss see a Black boy. Nah, they also see a bio-electric, battery-operated toy, part of a Stanford Sutton Industries ploy to bring fat cat football alums joy.

(Wit money. Anpil, anpil lajan.)

An’ that pisses them off. So they gon’ keep rushin’ off an’ bustin’ off these queries at a machine-gun pace in my face while smirkin’ at my Haitian Creole vocabulary, pretendin’ they can only understand me, barely, ’cause my accent is too thick an’ scary.

Pakont—but on the flip side—them Chicago reporters gon’ give me the benefit of the doubt (that’s right) when they write they stories witout bias tonight. They embrace a sovereign state that thrives on a black market sparked by innovation an’ encouraged by a Haitian who planned a nation for secession from a State of Imperfection, then made Chicago the greatest an’ said to hell wit those Stater racists.

Like the ones in front of me now. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 966: Code Switching (Part 1 of 4)

Code Switching originally appeared in If Wishes Were Obfuscation Codes and Other Stories – September 12, 2023.

Contains depictions of racism.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:12 — 41.9MB)

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Code Switching (Part 1 of 4)

By Malon Edwards

INTRO: ALL I’M EVER GON’ DO IS STAY BLACK AND DIE

JEAN-MICHEL FEAT. KINSLEY CHASE

Kinsley Chase sits on manman mwen plastic-covered couch. The InTell HumbleBrag subprogram Stanford Sutton Industries chipped me with says she’s wearing a circa 2020 Theresa Frostad Eggesbø Resurrection skinload.

I had no idea this shit actually worked. I don’t HumbleBrag. I thought it was all about narcissism and went in one direction, so I said fuck that shit.

But Kinsley Chase HumbleBraggin’ ’bout how unique (meanin’ how expensive) her skinload is makes sense. These days, pourin’ honey like that into some poor Black people’s ear can be an effective war propaganda tool. We all know both the State of Illinois and the Sovereign State of Chicago recruitin’.

Too bad I don’t like siwo. Or lagè.

‘Sides, manman mwen and I don’t need no tools. We juss need to pay our bills. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 951: The Scientist Does Not Look Back

Escape Pod 951: The Scientist Does Not Look Back is an Escape Pod original.

Death, grief and loss.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:27 — 46.4MB)

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The Scientist Does Not Look Back

By Kristen Koopman

Feb. 17, 3:40 AM. Audio notebook for new project: revival of a clinically dead patient, 36 year old male, died of hypothermia and shock.

The technician at the morgue hesitated when releasing him to me. I’m not surprised, with the tone that took hold of my voice as I corrected her Mr. to Dr. as she took down my details. When I gave her my name, her pen stalled over the paper—a giveaway that his parents had called before I arrived. I should be grateful that she released him to me anyway, honoring my legal right to the body. I should be grateful for so much, I suppose, even if it doesn’t feel like it, to have this opportunity to—to not let his story end in tragedy. (Continue Reading…)

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