Posts Tagged ‘Eric Valdes’

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Escape Pod 1062: Extrasolar Ghost Tours: Safety Questionable, Lizards Guaranteed

Escape Pod 1062: Extrasolar Ghost Tours: Safety Questionable, Lizards Guaranteed is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:07 — 62.4MB)

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Extrasolar Ghost Tours: Safety Questionable, Lizards Guaranteed

By Hans Ege Wenger

I am a hundred and seventy-nine years old when I commit my first betrayal. It is a small one, relevant only to the blue-flecked lizards on Alda Safiya’s southernmost desert landmass. Our thousand-solar-year plan will cool the planet by forty-two degrees Celsius, just below what the lizards can tolerate. They will die—not for about three hundred years, but die nonetheless.

It’s not really an oversight on my makers’ part. All terraforming projects involve the “unavoidable loss of indigenous biodiversity” according to the briefing document in my memory. I’ve already spirited three hundred breeding pairs into cold storage in my periphery, to be rehomed in zoos once the temperature stabilizes.

But I enjoy the lizards, as they are, in situ. They tickle my remote seismic sensors with their industrious warren-digging and synchronized, foot-pounding mating dances. And I, locked in a geostationary orbit over Alda Safiya, will never visit the zoo. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1022: Butter Side Down (Part 2 of 2)

Butter Side Down originally appeared in Writers of the Future (volume 40) – May 2024.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:42 — 77.1MB)

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Butter Side Down (Part 2 of 2)

By Kal M

 

(…Continued from Part 1)

 

INTERVIEW LOG 10023869-01-03

SUBJECT: SMITH, JOSEPH (HUMAN)

Captain Crab said humans have special abilities? Oh, sure, that’s true. It’s called sweat. It’s this biological function humans have to regulate our body temperature. You’ve heard of it? Yeah. It makes us great endurance athletes. We can also do this nifty thing called going into the alarm stage. Basically, in an emergency, our brains turn off our pain receptors and divert all energy into survival. So we’re kind of weak and slow, normally, but under duress we get this big burst of power. Sometimes you hear stories of humans managing weeks without food, or lifting several times our body weight, or cutting off our own limbs to escape a trap. An injured human can keep going for ages. That’s why, when things get dangerous, you want a human around just in case. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1021: Butter Side Down (Part 1 of 2)

Butter Side Down originally appeared in Writers of the Future (volume 40) – May 2024.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:04 — 69.2MB)

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Butter Side Down (Part 1 of 2)

By Kal M

DEPARTMENT OF LAW ENFORCEMENT CASE FILE 10023869

UNITED INTERGALACTIC SPACE COUNCIL OF FREE SENTIENT PERSONS (PLAINTIFF) VS HUMAN JOSEPH SMITH (DEFENDANT)

CHARGE(S): THEFT OF FEDERAL PROPERTY, TREASON, BREACH OF CONTRACT, CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT MURDER, WARMONGERING, CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT GENOCIDE

STATUS: DECIDED

VERDICT: GUILTY

SENTENCE: DEATH.

(Transcript begins).

INTERVIEW LOG 10023869-01-01

SUBJECT: SMITH, JOSEPH (HUMAN)

STATUS: DEFENDANT

It’s not such a crazy situation when you think about it. All I did was fall in love with a toaster and cause an intergalactic political incident. I don’t see why it’s such a big deal. It could’ve happened to anyone, yeah? (Continue Reading…)

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