Posts Tagged ‘family’

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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 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 999: Eros, Philia, Agape (Flashback Friday)

Eros, Philia, Agape originally appeared on Tor.com and first appeared on Escape Pod on Episode 250, July 22, 2010.

Marital strife and implied child abuse

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:14:29 — 102.8MB)

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Eros, Philia, Agape (Excerpt)

By Rachel Swirsky

The objects belonged to them both, but Adriana waved her hand bitterly when Lucian began packing. “Take whatever you want,” she said, snapping her book shut. She waited by the door, watching Lucian with sad and angry eyes.

Their daughter, Rose, followed Lucian around the house. “Are you going to take that, Daddy? Do you want that?” Wordlessly, Lucian held her hand. He guided her up the stairs and across the uneven floorboards where she sometimes tripped. Rose stopped by the picture window in the master bedroom, staring past the palm fronds and swimming pools, out to the vivid cerulean swath of the ocean. Lucian relished the hot, tender feel of Rose’s hand. I love you, he would have whispered, but he’d surrendered the ability to speak.

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Escape Pod 998: The Carina Nebula

The Carina Nebula originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, July/August 2023.

Includes a few A-grade curses.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:31 — 64.4MB)

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The Carina Nebula

By Kelsey Hutton

I heard the soft shit shit shit just when I’d almost floated past the blue hatch door that led into some kind of storage room. I had to laugh. I mean, how many times have I said that? Plus the voice sounded older, a woman’s, and I love when adults just say what they mean, instead of carefully guarding every word around “the kids.”

I wasn’t really doing much, just wandering through some of the ship’s back tunnels. So I reached out right before momentum took me past the hatch and grabbed onto the cool metal. I pulled myself back and shook my head side to side a little to clear away my clouds of dark hair.

We were in zero G these days, and like, I knew that tying my hair back was probably the smarter decision when zooming around, but whatever. My hair was kinda curly, kinda wavey, with some straight pieces thrown in for kicks. The sculptures it made floating around my head was probably my best feature, so hair ties be damned. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 997: Sanctuary, Part 2 of 2

“Sanctuary” first appeared in Kyanite Press, Winter 2020

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:04 — 61.0MB)

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Show Notes

Don’t miss “Sanctuary, Part 1”

Sanctuary (Part 2)

by Alexis Ames

3.

Eilan slept for thirteen uneventful hours while I sat at the helm and wondered if it was possible for an android to die of boredom. I had the autopilot off because at least flying the ship gave me a task to focus on, though as tasks went, it was far from challenging. This area of space was truly a void—there weren’t even micrometeoroid clouds to avoid, or random space junk to scan and analyze. Two more weeks of this—I wasn’t sure how I was going to survive. I knew that I would, of course. It was just going to be an incredibly painful two weeks.

And then, at the end of it, I would be free. My criminal record would be expunged, and I would be released from the clutches of Veduvis Authority, free at last to return home and resume the life I had started all those years ago.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 996: Sanctuary, Part 1 of 2

“Sanctuary” first appeared in Kyanite Press, Winter 2020

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:33 — 47.9MB)

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Sanctuary (Part 1)

by Alexis Ames

1.

The king of the galaxy died the day before the biggest holiday of the year, and six hours before I was supposed to be on a shuttle home. It was lousy, rotten timing, and I reflected that I should’ve done as Cecil said and called in sick, telling my superiors that I picked up a virus from the case we worked last week and taken the dawn shuttle instead of the evening one. But I knew it would’ve caused me more problems than it was worth, namely because the director would want to put me through a battery of tests when I returned to make sure I couldn’t pass the “virus” on to any of the computers or other sensitive equipment at the station.

I should’ve done it anyway, because if I had, I wouldn’t be sitting here in the director’s office, listening as she handed me an assignment that almost certainly meant I wouldn’t be returning home for the foreseeable future. Cecil and Halvor both were going to kill me.

(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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Escape Pod 920: Harvest the Stars

Escape Pod 920: Harvest the Stars is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:36 — 29.3MB)

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Show Notes

Theater of the Midnight SunThis episode is sponsored by The Theater of the Midnight Sun podcast, an anthology series of sci-fi/fantasy audio dramas where…

FUN ADVENTURE AWAITS! With wall-to-wall music and nifty stereophonic sound!

THRILL to your own little end of the world from something the size of a spaghetti noodle, in the harrowing tale “Uniform”!

HEAR Santa’s annual “State of the Workshop” address while dodging an army of partying, out-of-control elves in “Goodbye, Cruel World”!

CHUG back a Mountain Dew with a burnt-out Devil who’s bored, bored, bored with his job, in the story “Big Business”!

All this and MORE can be found at The Theater of the Midnight Sun! Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and podcast directories everywhere. Ad-free.

The Reviews Are In!

“A top notch production well worth your time! This troupe of foundlings will have you thrilled, chilled, and laughing out loud! Theater of the Midnight Sun is a serialized podcast anthology worth every minute.”

“Awesome podcast! I am truly in awe of how ‘out of the box’ these podcasts are. Completely love it!”

Harvest the Stars

By Mar Vincent

The summer Sif turned one, the starships were ripe on the vine.

They hulked in fields ringing the town where Tuja had always lived. A place far from big cities, where the starlight they fed on came pure and bright.

“The seeds start out like any seeds; small, unassuming. Until we fertilize them, tend them. Give them space to grow,” Tuja said to the infant on her lap, who must have been more focused on the fingers stuffed in her mouth than the sight of the field crew moving amongst hulls like insects scrambling over gourds. They started in the early afternoon to harvest with the dusk. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 884: Zhao and the Flightless Crane

Escape Pod 884: Zhao and the Flightless Crane is an Escape Pod original.

Discussion of death and loss.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:32 — 53.4MB)

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Zhao and the Flightless Crane

By A. J. Mo

Quick sapphires danced over sun-silvered water. Soundless, they zipped and wheeled to the quiet rhythm of filtration pumps. Dragonflies, Zhao thought. Other winged jewels joined the flurry, some green as spring, others red as blood, wings iridescent.

“Good,” he said to himself. “Lake’s clean.”

“That is good,” echoed Ah Bak in their tinny voice. “Dragonflies do not breed in stagnant water.”

In the distance, the Pearl River curled east, having conferred upon the lake a small fraction of its life on its thousand-mile journey from the west. Zhao stared at the scene, taking in the collage of colours and contours when he noticed something in the sky. A plane. Almost imperceptibly small, it cut its trail across perfect blue. His stomach tightened, a light prelude to much greater agony. A memory forced its way to the surface, fingers ruined by fire, the rest of the hand lost. All they could find. All that was left of Chen. Zhao clenched his teeth and dragged his eyes over the white naked sun to blot out the image.

“Does Lei like dragonflies?” came Ah Bak’s tinny voice, their haematite beak unmoving. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 880: A Cosmonaut’s Guide to Talking to Your Parents

Escape Pod 880: A Cosmonaut’s Guide to Talking to Your Parents is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:22 — 49.0MB)

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A Cosmonaut’s Guide to Talking to Your Parents

By Adriana C. Grigore

You have (3) unopened voicemails on your personal line. Last received 31 minutes ago, Aurea Minor Time.

> Read?

> No. Switch to broadcast.

> Engage deep space satellite?

> Yes. On, say…a five-sector perimeter.

> Live transmission upon connection?

> Sure.

“… and when I said that no, I didn’t order the pie, I made it myself, they said—they said, oh, you shouldn’t have made such a mess! And I, well, I, I cried.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s… it’s like the mess was all they saw, you know?”

“And you wanted them to see you.”

“Yeah… I mean, doesn’t everyone?”

Sam looked at the canopy of stars past the asteroid belt he was supposed to be mapping. None of them would’ve been visible from any of the planets he’d grown up on, but they felt familiar anyway. Distant and still, as his spacesuit ebbed and flowed. (Continue Reading…)

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