Posts Tagged ‘EP Original’

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Escape Pod 1071: Hive Rules (Democratic Futures Month)

Escape Pod 1071: Hive Rules (Democratic Futures Month) is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:19 — 47.6MB)

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Show Notes

This episode is sponsored by Sleepphones! Use code ESCAPEPOD and get 10% off your purchase.

Hive Rules

by Gregory Lomasney

“That is five votes for the proposal, versus seventeen trillion, three hundred and twenty-two billion, forty-two million, five hundred and eight thousand, and sixty-eight votes against the proposal,” Trillby declared.

Simmons gave a pointed stare at Zal. The Coordinated Peoples of the Zalthorian Hive Society, or Zal to their friends, nodded sagely at the count.

“Well, I think that settles it,” they intoned. The amorphous mass of psychically linked units politely held a humanoid form, complete with mimicked facial features and pigmentation. Among the other five crew in the capsule, four were human, and Zal usually tried to blend in.

“I’m not sure the voting system is working as intended,” Simmons said acidly.

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Escape Pod 1069: I Was An Alien Love Machine

Escape Pod 1069: I Was An Alien Love Machine is an Escape Pod original.

Discussions of sex and cruising the bar scene, but nothing graphic.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:47 — 48.2MB)

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Show Notes

This episode is sponsored by Sleepphones! Use code ESCAPEPOD and get 10% off your purchase.

I Was An Alien Love Machine

by D. H. Willison

Not an actual machine, of course. Those things are fun at first, but get repetitive after a while. At least, from how I’ve heard friends tell it. It’s a local expression I’d picked up on my LARP adventure. When I signed up to become a swapper, I didn’t specifically plan on romance. I was just sick of modern technology and wanted to live somewhere life was simple for a while. Earth wasn’t my first choice, but the surgery necessary to fit in on Yegnad II looked… painful.

I’ll spare you my early misadventures; mixing up soy sauce and coffee at a diner, discovering that ‘getting laid’ didn’t pertain to eggs in quite the way I’d surmised, things like that. I’d had my ups and downs that first month, experienced local culture, participated in numerous customs, and even managed not to get arrested for any misunderstandings which were completely understandable and/or not my fault. I was presently engaged in a practice known as ‘regretting one’s life choices at a drinking establishment.’

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Escape Pod 1065: Sister Cities

Escape Pod 1065: Sister Cities is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:03 — 59.6MB)

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Show Notes

This episode is sponsored by Sleepphones! Use code ESCAPEPOD and get 10% off your purchase.

Sister Cities

by Marie Vibbert

The Pour House Tavern is built on a stairway, with low ceilings that step down along with the bar, so it’s hard to see who’s at the other end, and the smoke gathers on the high side, making it even harder, and that’s why I didn’t notice Rusty until Crash yanked me down to her mouth-level to shout, “My drone came back from West Leg.” She raises her brows, widens her eyes, like the only reason I’m not squealing in excitement is that I don’t get what she means.

It means that for once, the Halo didn’t shoot something down, nothing more, nothing less, but now I’ve seen Rusty there, and he’s looking over at us like he’s wondering what we’re up to. Rusty’s a rival climber with a rich daddy who underbids contracts because he doesn’t need the money. I haul Crash off her bar stool—she weighs less than a kitten—and shoulder my way out to the steeply-slanting alley. In one direction, the center of town gleams like a golden bowl. In the other, I smell piss. I turn to Crash with my most bored expression. “You think you can get to The Halo?”

“I know it! Look, I have footage, and a flight plan—”

“Ignore it,” I say. “Nothing but misery and death for the folks who try to go up.”

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Escape Pod 1064: The Rewilding of Lot 4987

Escape Pod 1064: The Rewilding of Lot 4987 is an Escape Pod original.

Includes several grade-A swears.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:09 — 68.0MB)

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The Rewilding of Lot 4987

By Johnny Caputo

From across the darkened rooftop of the long-abandoned engine plant, Geli heard the unmistakable whirring of drone blades.

Shit, she thought. Not here, too.

She looked up from her work weeding the tomato and lettuce beds. Sure enough, one of interFace Robotics’ surveillance drones was hovering there, its palm-sized screen held aloft by copter blades. The screen glowed with interFace’s standard golden facial avatar: a cartoonish robot, smiling mindlessly as it flew towards her. Its camera captured footage of the vegetable beds she maintained on this derelict property, a relic of the fossil fuel economy that interFace had never cared to surveil.

Until now, apparently. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1063: Modern Birdwatching

Escape Pod 1063: Modern Birdwatching is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:53 — 33.3MB)

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Show Notes

This episode is sponsored by Sleepphones! Use code ESCAPEPOD and get 10% off your purchase.

Modern Birdwatching

by Jeff Soesbe

I used to like birdwatching, especially hummingbirds, until the feeder on my apartment balcony started getting one-star reviews on CHURP.

CHURP
By Birds. For Birds.
/c/feeders/USA/CA_NORTH/BAYAREA/SANBRUNO
Location: 750 Glenview Drive, #206. Balcony.
Feeder Count: One.
Size: Small.
Refill Frequency: Irregular.
Average Rating: 1.5

Comments
Hummy292: Booooring. Weak syrup. Total fly-by.
UWishUCouldFlyLikeMe: If I wanted bland fluoridated water reeking of a plastic tub, I’d go back to the city park.
BeTheBlur: Can a feeder be worse than awful? YESITCAN!!!

“Those birds are so wrong!” I declared one Friday night, after two bottles of Black Butte Porter. “My feeder has been unjustly attacked. Hummingbirds don’t come by anymore. My BirdTrack ranking is plummeting.”

“Birds have smarts, and a website,” Mister Friskers, my Seal Point Siamese, said, looking out the window from his cat tree. “They’re entitled to their opinions.”

“I liked birdwatching better before birds had opinions. Or smarts. And how did *those* birds get smart anyway?”

“Genetic engineering of pets for brains and voice. Just like me, buddy.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1061: Pigeons and Robots and Pensive Worlds

Escape Pod 1061: Pigeons and Robots and Pensive Worlds is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:13 — 44.2MB)

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Show Notes

This episode is sponsored by Sleepphones! Use code ESCAPEPOD and get 10% off your purchase.

Pigeons and Robots and Pensive Worlds

by Trae Hawkins

We found the pigeon and its robot companion on Planet 44.

Picture-perfect, this planet, large enough for our directors to build schools of nepotistic grandeur, their tiny, grubby-fingered silver spooners staking claim to the land.

We shuddered as our ship settled onto a grassy hill, that wary, dormant beast called hope stirring awake. Planet 44 was, perhaps, the paradise that came to us in our dreams.

It looked the part, what with the plush, mossy ground, the flora sprouting as if placed meticulously by some god building its dream terrarium. The ground even rumbled for a moment, as if in welcome.

But we were getting ahead of ourselves—there was protocol to be followed, and our directors were more than likely to deny this land to us, even if it was the one.

“How’s the pressure?”

“Atmospheric or societal?”

“This is the ninth time you’ve made that joke.”

“You’re no fun. Pressure’s fine, I guess. Readers are saying we’ve got a molten core, stable temperatures. Two equidistant stars that don’t seem to be in any rush to die. Probes are currently gathering more data.”

“There are trees! There, in the distance!”

“Planet S87 had trees.”

We all fell silent. We did not like to talk about Planet S87.

“Keep your helmets on, for now. Just in case.”

(Continue Reading…)

Escape Pod 1059: A Little Freedom Makes Us Rebels

Escape Pod 1059: A Little Freedom Makes Us Rebels is an Escape Pod original.

Mild mentions of parental abuse

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:44 — 53.2MB)

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Show Notes

This episode is sponsored by Sleepphones! Use code ESCAPEPOD and get 10% off your purchase.

A Little Freedom Makes Us Rebels

by Kathleen Schaefer

When our ship made landing after three centuries in space, we were ready for the inhospitable lands, the harsh nights, and the hard labor of terraforming a new planet. Aboard a generation ship, labor is familiar: every moment requires our attention. But here, nothing prepared us for the idleness. These miniature pockets of time that don’t demand our productivity are more alien than the silt-eating rubberfish in the streams of our new home. We survived six generations in space, but if anything ends us, it will be this false bounty of unfilled minutes.

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Escape Pod 1055: Impossibility Crow (Flashback Friday)

Impossibility Crow was originally published as Escape Pod episode 557 on January 5, 2017.

Includes violence and swears.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:30 — 47.9MB)

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Impossibility Crow

By Remy Nakamura

The Kingdom Coffee Missionary Handbook tells Paulo that he should always put his guns away during a door approach. He’s heard this hundreds of times before, but the Handbook speaks with a voice of authority, deep like a luchador’s, strong like a drill sergeant’s, calm like his abuelito’s. It slides in just under his ARgog’s selectively amplified environmental audio. 450 bonus points if the contact is completed without violence, calculates the Handbook, 900 if there are no deaths. Each death harms the public image of the Kingdom, the Handbook tells him. Paulo nods agreement. Way better to spread the faith on the no-kill difficulty setting.

Still, Paulo is not stupid, so he pauses to load Rambo, his ancient and lovingly modded M4A1 Carbine, before slinging it across his back. Looking bad-ass is his favorite violence prevention technique. The Handbook says nothing about tear gas, and he decides not to mention the CS smoke grenade in his left pocket. His last couple of leads had ended with tense stand-offs. Goddess, yo creo, he prays silently. Help my unbelief. He fingers his mala of Robusto beans, sniffing hard to catch its fading aroma. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1053: The Game of Possibilities

Escape Pod 1053: The Game of Possibilities is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:37 — 32.9MB)

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Show Notes

Ethan Ham

https://www.ethanham.com/index.html?second-edition

Elie Hirschman

https://eliehirschman.com/

Adam Pracht

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

Alasdair Stuart

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

Reiner Knizia

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/2/reiner-knizia

SleepPhones

https://www.sleepphones.co.uk/

Voidmerch store

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

The Game of Possibilities

By Ethan Ham

It was Emmett’s first tournament, so his dad had to pay for an American Gata Association membership in addition to the entry fee. At the registration table, Emmett was given a lanyard printed with his name, age (twelve years old), and supposed rank.

Emmett’s dad transferred enough money for Emmett to buy lunch, said a few words of encouragement, and left. The gata tournament was an all-day affair, and non-players weren’t allowed in the game room, so it made sense for his dad not to stick around. Still, Emmett found himself choking down a small sense of abandonment.

With nothing else to do, Emmett joined the flow of players moving towards the tournament hall. Stepping through a bank of doors, he entered an enormous room that held a seemingly endless grid of tables, each neatly outfitted with game boards and numbered stands. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Escape Pod 1044: Rhona’s Tavern and Spacetime Portal

Escape Pod 1044: Rhona’s Tavern and Spacetime Portal is an Escape Pod original.

Occasional use of harsh language

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:45 — 50.9MB)

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Show Notes

Escape Pod is proud to say that we have partnered with Sleepphones headphones to provide a special Escape Pod branded set of headphones.

SleepPhones® headphones are soft headphones that you can wear while you sleep. They’re comfortable, slim and essentially ‘headphones in a headband’.

Rhona’s Tavern and Spacetime Portal

by S. L. Myers

The two boon companions walked through the snowy woods along the cobblestoned road, the night lit by hissing gas lampposts. Ahead, just seen through the scarecrow trees, a neon sign glowed bright green—RHONA’S TAVERN. The modest two-story brick establishment was the only structure on the icy, tumbling, carbonaceous asteroid trapped in the bubble of frozen time.

The two were deep in a conversation very few in any time or place would have been able to understand, talking over and with each other in a mix of Common Tongue circa 5345 New Era, and in the woofs, squeaks, and chirps of the Deinonychus, circa Early Cretaceous period.

The man and proto-raptor turned off the road and followed the narrow, winding path leading to the tavern. They stopped on the stone landing near the oak and wrought iron door with its leaded glass and waited for the defense systems to finish their scans.

A click. The heavy door swung out, and the two friends stepped in, blasters raised, ready for anything, everything.

(Continue Reading…)

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