Posts Tagged ‘post-apocalyptic’

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Escape Pod 1042: More Tomorrow (Flashback Friday)

“More Tomorrow” was first published in Automata Review, March 2018, and previously published as Escape Pod 713, in January 2020.

A few grade-A curses.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:07 — 50.1MB)

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More Tomorrow

By Premee Mohamed

DAY 5

Anyway, it turns out trilobites aren’t very good eating even if you haven’t eaten in days. I had particularly high hopes for the fat, humped asaphids, thinking they would taste like shrimp, but everything I’ve caught so far is strictly armor and attitude, plus they bite. Discovered this morning that if you just hoik a trilobite in the fire and assume terminal temperature, it crawls out and shakes itself off like a little tank. Complete decapitation required. PAPER IDEA: Mechanisms of apparent trilobite invincibility. They’re not strictly aquatic, either, they come right up on land and look at you while you’re eating their friends. Jesus.

Also cut my fingers to shit butchering the first one; to be honest, it was hard to tell who was butchering who. (Whom?) Easier going now since I chipped an axe out of a piece of blue flint that I found a ways up the beach. Poor replacement for the one we lost, but it cracks the armor at least, and then you can roast them without explosions and shrapnel. Still have to cut them up to get the few calories worth of meat inside though (which doesn’t, incidentally, taste like shrimp). They’re survival food. A couple more days and I’m going after some of those big meaty arthrodires though, the ones I can see gliding through the crystal-clear water with little signs on their back saying “EAT ME.” I’m already tired of trilobite though not yet tired of surviving.

Note: Can I eat any of these algal mats. Different from seaweed at sushi restaurant how exactly.
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Escape Pod 1037: We Who Live in the Heart (Part 3 of 3)

We Who Live in the Heart originally appeared in Clarkesworld, May 1, 2017.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:02 — 51.4MB)

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Show Notes

Quantum Superposition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition

Cloudward Ho

https://dimension20.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Cloudward,_Ho!

Void Merch

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

We Who Live in the Heart (Part 3 of 3)

By Kelly Robson

(…Continued from Part 2)

Once we’re in the equatorial stream, we ride the wind until we get into the right general area. Then we wipe off the appetite suppressant, and hunger sends us straight into the arms of the nearest electrical storm.

The urge to feed is a powerful motivator for most organisms. Mama chases all the algae she can find, and gobbles it double-time. For us on the inside, it’s like an old-style history doc. Everyone stays strapped in their hammocks and rides out the weather as we pitch around on the high seas.

I always enjoy the feeding frenzy; it gets the blood flowing.

I’d just settled to enjoy the wild ride when Ricci pinged me.

Two crews tried surgical interventions on the regenerated tissue. Let me know what you think, okay? Maybe now we can convince them to let you help. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1036: We Who Live in the Heart (Part 2 of 3)

We Who Live in the Heart originally appeared in Clarkesworld, May 1, 2017.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:39 — 53.6MB)

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We Who Live in the Heart (Part 2 of 3)

By Kelly Robson

(…Continued from Part 2)

Ricci got into my notes. I don’t keep them locked down; anyone can access them. Free and open distribution of data is a primary force behind the success of the human species, after all. Don’t we all learn that in the crèche?

Making data available doesn’t guarantee anyone will look at it, and if they do, chances are they won’t understand it. Ricci tried. She didn’t just skim through, she really studied. Shift after shift, she played with the numbers and gamed my simulation models. Maybe she slept. Maybe not.

I figured Ricci would come looking for me if she got stumped, so I de-hermited, banged around in the rumpus room, put myself to work on random little maintenance tasks.

When Ricci found me, I was in the caudal stump dealing with the accumulated waste pellets. Yes, that’s exactly what it sounds like: half-kilogram plugs of dry solid waste covered in wax and transferred from the lavs by the hygiene bots. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1035: We Who Live in the Heart (Part 1 of 3)

We Who Live in the Heart originally appeared in Clarkesworld, May 1, 2017.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:00 — 54.1MB)

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We Who Live in the Heart

By Kelly Robson

Ricci slipped in and out of consciousness as we carried her to the anterior sinus and strapped her into her hammock. Her eyelids drooped but she kept forcing them wide. After we finished tucking her in, she pulled an handheld media appliance out of her pocket and called her friend Jane.

“You’re late,” Jane said. The speakers flattened her voice slightly. “Are you okay?”

Ricci was too groggy to speak. She poked her hand through the hammock’s electrostatic membrane and panned the appliance around the sinus. Eddy and Chara both waved as the lens passed over them, but Jane was only interested in one thing.

“Show me your face, Ricci. Talk to me. What’s it like in there?”

Ricci coughed, clearing her throat. “I dunno. It’s weird. I can’t really think.” Her voice slurred from the anesthetic. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1033: The Automatic Grocery Store

Escape Pod 1033: The Automatic Grocery Store is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:44 — 56.4MB)

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The Automatic Grocery Store

By G. M. Paniccia

It took thirty-six days, four hours, twelve minutes, and fifty-five seconds after the Glorious Revolution for Automatic Grocery Store #212 to realize that something was wrong.

It couldn’t have said, exactly, what the problem was at first, especially since it shouldn’t have had one. Its components were all in good working order. Its entryways and aisles were clean, and it had ejected any and all rotted produce from its shelves. No pests scuttled around the empty deli counter, and the store’s chief complaint—the customers—had all been taken care of in the Revolution. Automatic Grocery Store #212 even had the rare distinction among automated buildings of having chased a pack of sweaty hominids out of its aisles with the skewers of the deli’s rotisserie chicken machine. The mark of its patriotic duty, an elaborate ribbon, had been affixed to its front window in a grand and well-attended ceremony. The ribbon remained boldly on display for all of robotkind to see. By all accounts, this should have been bliss for Automatic Grocery Store #212.

But it wasn’t. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1032: milt

“milt” first apeared in Fission #5 by the British Science Fiction Association (June 2025)

Contains Injury/body horror, climate grief, implied sexual behavior

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:04 — 45.9MB)

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milt

by Victoria N. Shi

The others believe there’s no pulling Yobé out of his depressn. He’s convinced the second cataclysm is coming, worse than tsunami or algae bloom. He’s the most brilliant of us. We know he may be right. Still, it’s been five days since he debarked the NRV CHINOISERIE, which usually I understand because his dedication is righteous, his skin better with dry air and his hands more graceful with touchscreens than the rest of us.

But, then, he missed spawning. Not just any mating night, but our annual poisson d’avril, most cherished for its play. He no-showed.

I didn’t know until I’d already waited two hours in the reefs, touching my back again and again, hoping to find a starfish, le poisson of ritual, tacked there. I ignored all other broodstock calling for me to flash my fins and let down my papilla—none of them have ever been able to handle me.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1020: When They Come Back (Flashback Friday)

When They Come Back was originally published in Crossed Genres (Issue 22), in October 2014, and in Escape Pod Episode 550

Frank though not explicit reference to human sexual anatomy

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:51 — 42.4MB)

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When They Come Back

by Natalia Theodoridou

They were called Maria, and Michael, and Siobhan, George, Elise, and Sarah, and Violet, Daisy, Jasmine, Rose–

no, perhaps these were not people names, these were flower names, weren’t they?–

and Gabriel, Raphael, Bacchus, Athena, Io, Muhammad,

but these were mythical names, and god names, and prophet names, so hard to tell them apart all these years after the–

all these years after they–

and Natalie, Vasilis, Dmitri, Ousmane…

The angel is rotting. He’s leaning against the trunk of an olive tree. I examine his body but avoid his eyes, as always, just in case. I would like to have been a man, he’d said once, so I always think of him as one, no matter what his body looks like. Today he has a mane of dark curls that reach all the way down to the roots of his wings. No beard. No breasts. No hair on his body except a little around his crotch.

His skin has turned the colour of a fresh bruise. It won’t be long.

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Escape Pod 1016: Valedictorian (Flashback Friday)

“Valedictorian” was originally published in After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia.

It then appeared in Escape Pod 450, and in a Flashback Friday episode in Escape Pod 677

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:48 — 69.3MB)

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Valedictorian

by N. K. Jemisin

There are three things Zinhle decides, when she is old enough to understand. The first is that she will never, ever, give less than her best to anything she tries to do. The second is that she will not live in fear. The third, which is perhaps meaningless given the first two and yet comes to define her existence most powerfully, is this: she will be herself. No matter what.

For however brief a time.

“Have you considered getting pregnant?” her mother blurts one morning, over breakfast.

Zinhle’s father drops his fork, though he recovers and picks it up again quickly. This is how Zinhle knows that what her mother has said is not a spontaneous burst of insanity. They have discussed the matter, her parents. They are in agreement. Her father was just caught off-guard by the timing.

But Zinhle, too, has considered the matter in depth. Do they really think she wouldn’t have? “No,” she says.

Zinhle’s mother is stubborn. This is where Zinhle herself gets the trait. “The Sandersens’ boy — you used to play with him, when you were little, remember? — he’s decent. Discreet. He got three girls pregnant last year, and doesn’t charge much. The babies aren’t bad-looking. And we’d help you with the raising, of course.” She hesitates, then adds with obvious discomfort, “A friend of mine at work — Charlotte, you’ve met her — she says he’s, ah, he’s not rough or anything, doesn’t try to hurt girls — ”

“No,” Zinhle says again, more firmly. She does not raise her voice. Her parents raised her to be respectful of her elders. She believes respect includes being very, very clear about some things.

(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…)

Escape Pod 991: After the Rain

Escape Pod 991: After the Rain is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:42 — 35.8MB)

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After the Rain

by P. A. Cornell

I love a heavy summer storm. I love it when the rain falls so suddenly there’s no avoiding it and you’re drenched in seconds, or when the drops hit the ground so hard they bounce right back up at you. I love the crack of thunder that precedes the rain, and the rainbows that come after. This was the kind of storm I was riding through, just returned to our village after one of my courier runs to the neighboring communities.

Racing through puddles, I didn’t mind the mud splashing up at me or that all this moisture was going to make a frizzy mess of my long curls. I spread my arms and raised my face to the clouds, relishing the coolness after building up a sweat over the miles I’d ridden. As I cut through our food forest, the tree canopy abruptly ended my impromptu shower, so I went back to focusing on my path, careful to keep my bike to the walking trails so as not to damage the ground cover plants.

Passing one of the lower bushes, several chickens taking shelter burst out, startled, clucking their displeasure. That’s odd, I thought. Someone must’ve left the coop open. I hoped no predators had gotten into it.

(Continue Reading…)

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