Posts Tagged ‘post-apocalyptic’

Genres: , ,

Escape Pod 571: Beetle-Cleaned Skulls

Escape Pod 571: Beetle-Cleaned Skulls is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:53 — 47.2MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Beetle-Cleaned Skulls

By J. E. Bates

Fine amber dust infiltrated everything in the Preserve. Each morning, I vacuumed it away with my ventral hose prior to opening my kiosk. I paid particular care to my curios: the fossils, the bismuth crystals, and the beetle-cleaned skulls. Forebears, especially the children, delighted in receiving my curios as gifts. Each successful transaction gave me a burst of surplus energy, expressed as pride.

The mineral specimens I gathered from the talus behind the kiosk. I polished them right in the kiosk according to aesthetic principles. But I prepared the skulls in the subterranean machine rooms. They were created from deceased rhuka, a species of domesticated bovine. No other kiosk attendant created such skulls, and Forebears traveled great distances to receive one. They used them to decorate their caves.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 566: Honey and Bone (Artemis Rising)

Escape Pod 566: Honey and Bone (Artemis Rising) is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:32 — 38.5MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Artemis Rising returns to Escape Pod for its third year! This month-long event highlights science fiction by women and non-binary authors. We have five original stories this year that range in topics from biotech to far-flung A.I, virtual reality, and nanotech.

Honey and Bone

By Mads Alvey

With each step she took, the girl’s leg hissed. Thump, hiss, thump, hiss, thump, hiss. Whenever she lifted her leg, the knee joint extended. Her thigh and shin pulled apart unsettlingly, reminiscent of something deeply broken. Her gait was slow, round, loping. She didn’t move with any expedience. It was a speed without rush, or any desire for such.

Her footfalls themselves were soft, a quiet–thup, thup, thup. Soft leather covered her feet as she padded along, her hissing knee the loudest sound there. Once, it had creaked, a creak reminiscent of breaking metal–or perhaps, nearly as much, a rusty hinge. Before that… she didn’t remember.

The girl plodded slowly through a field of tall grass. The dry grass was up to her waist, rustling with each step. Rustle; rustle, hiss; rustle; rustle, hiss. It was late summer and the sun was high and hot. Her pack was heavy with honey from the field of hives outside the village. It was raw honey that she had scraped into dark jars, small glass jars could be found, at least one, in each home in her village. Several bees still lingered, buzzing around her as she walked, following her home.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 565: The Zombee Project 3.0 (Artemis Rising)

Escape Pod 565: The Zombee Project 3.0 (Artemis Rising) is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:52 — 41.6MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Artemis Rising returns to Escape Pod for its third year! This month-long event highlights science fiction by women and non-binary authors. We have five original stories this year that range in topics from biotech to far-flung A.I, virtual reality, and nanotech.

The Zombee Project 3.0

By Allison Mulder

Jensen brought the job offer to each of them in person, like no one did anymore. She poached them from the best labs and the best apiaries, all over the world. Put everything she knew on the table, in out-of-the-way cafés and fine-but-nothing-fancy hotel rooms and home kitchens which smelled strongly of coffee and not much else.

She handpicked them. She made that very clear. Like she was assembling heroes, forming a unit—a rescue unit, with a crucial task.

At that point, it wasn’t recruitment. It was a higher calling.

“It’s not legal,” Jensen told each of them. “But no one who could enforce that knows about it.”

None of them cared. They signed Jensen’s contracts and confidentiality agreements.

And from then on they were all members of Jensen’s team.

Nothing less and nothing more.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Escape Pod 561: The Android’s Prehistoric Menagerie

Mothership Zeta, February 2016

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:22 — 46.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

The Android’s Prehistoric Menagerie

By A. Merc Rustad

The world explodes.

Unit EX-702 comes back online when UV wavelengths activate its solar plating. Its optics are crusted with red dust; a low-powered system scan concludes that though its left arm is missing and there is excessive oxidation damage along its chassis and helmet, as well as a web spun from several arachnids (Nephila clavipes) now embedded in its servo stump, EX-702 is functional. Its operational protocols are intact.

This unit is programmed for the support of life and sapience.

Its databanks are semi-corrupted beyond basic functions and archived footage and base knowledge dumps. Attempts to access the ‘Net and reboot from a mobile hub fail with a repeated NO CONNECTION AVAILABLE alert. EX-702 lifts its remaining arm and scrapes dust away from its optics.

Operational Function 413: this unit will maintain self-preservation operations, including but not limited to the access of immediately available data to determine procedure, when it does not conflict with the preservation of homo sapiens’ survival.

EX-702 sits in the crater of what had been Newtonian Genetech Incorporated laboratories and HQ facility. Debris from the lab cakes the thick concrete and rusted iron walls. Its scanner matrix glitches with static-filled readouts and partially deteriorated unprocessed updates from microseconds before it was shut down.

Scientist voices agitated and unmodulated without appropriate safety masks. [STATIC] “—find survivors! Protect yourself!” [SHUT DOWN]

Something crackles against EX-702’s knee joints. Fibers, synthetic and organic—old HAZMAT suits shredded and woven around broken plywood and stripped copper wiring—shaped in a non-geometric design. Inside the structure sit three maroon and heather-brown eggs thirteen centimeters in length and six in diameter.

Processing…

(Continue Reading…)

Genres: , ,

Escape Pod 560: Run

Escape Pod 560: Run is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:04 — 29.6MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Run

By C.R. Hodges

The claxon blares three times: all clear. We file out of the underground shelter and up the serpentine lava tube. Our semi-annual hibernation drill, bureaucratic gibberish for run down to the emergency shelter and hide, is now monthly. I’m all for avoiding nuclear annihilation, but I wish the drills weren’t scheduled so close to lunar sunset.

I jostle my way toward the front of the long line headed for the surface modules. It’s been fourteen Earth days since I’ve talked to my best friend. Sure we could have emailed or texted, even from two-hundred and thirty-nine thousand miles away, but that would be cheating. We’re the Interplanetary Morse Code Club. Sally is President, Earth District; I’m Vice President of Lunar Operations. It’s a small club.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Escape Pod 559: Vegetablemen in Peanut Town

Escape Pod 559: Vegetablemen in Peanut Town is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:04 — 43.4MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Vegetablemen in Peanut Town

By August Marion

Otto scanned the grassy countryside for any sign of marauding vegetables. The steeple he and Darby were in wasn’t quite thirty feet tall, but it was taller than any other building in Peanut Town, so it offered an unobstructed view of the surrounding farmland. There were acres and acres of genetically engineered, perambulatory peanut plants shuffling around in scattered groups, probing the rich soil for nutrients with their roots. Everything looked perfectly safe. Peaceful even.

“Hey, genius.” Darby said acidly. “North is that a way.”

“Oh.” Otto said, as he turned around. He refocused the binoculars he was using, and then he saw them: vegetablemen. The same strain that had so annihilated Manhattan that even the rats had given up on the place. There were about three dozen of them scattered over the gently rolling hills. They lumbered toward the town slow and heavy on their long, stout, green stalks. They were still far off, but he could tell from the coloring of the peels around their thoraxes that they were the same cultivar that the king had sown on Manhattan.

Otto lowered the binoculars. He swallowed hard.

“Well?” Darby asked. “Is them the ones from Manhattan?”

“Those are they, yes.” Otto confirmed, as he tugged at his collar. He hated hot weather. It didn’t fit his wardrobe.

“We’re going to have to fight them.” Darby grinned madly.
(Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Escape Pod 556: In a Manner of Speaking

In a Manner of Speaking was originally published in Selfies from the End of the World: Historical Accounts of the Apocalypse, September 2015, DefCon One Publishing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:44 — 54.4MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

In a Manner of Speaking

By Charity Tahmaseb

I use the last of the good candles to build the radio. I still have light. The fire burns, and there is a never-ending supply of the cheap, waxy candles in the storeroom. I will–eventually–burn through all of those. My fire will die. The cold will invade this space.

But today I have a radio. Today I will speak to the world–or what’s left of it. I compare my radio to the picture in the instructions. It looks the same, but not all the steps had illustrations. This troubles me. My radio may not work.

I crank the handle to charge the battery. This feels good. This warms my arms, and I must take deep breaths to keep going. I shake out my hand and crank some more. When buzz and static fill my ears, I nearly jump. That, too, sounds warm. I am so used to the cold. The creak and groan of ice, the howl of the wind. These cold sounds are their own kind of silence. They hold nothing warm or wet or alive.

I decide on a frequency for no other reason than I like the number. I press the button on the mouthpiece. This, according to the instructions, will let the world hear me.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Escape Pod 555: Monstrance of Sky

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:07 — 43.4MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Monstrance of Sky

By Christopher Mark Rose

Aerbello — the shape one sees in the movement of wheat, blown by wind. The shape of wind, written in sheaves.

I left me, without really leaving. Well, not I myself, but Eva. She told me she was leaving me, as we made love in our bedroom. It was clear she didn’t mean immediately.

Cova — any place a crow could be. A crow-sized void, unoccupied by an actual crow.

She said we weren’t good for each other, we weren’t helping each other to grow. She said my God obsession had gotten to be too much. She said her presence in my life was redundant.

“Please don’t go,” I said. “If you go, my heart will be a cova.”  I couldn’t understand, and it hurt me. It felt as though I had swallowed a razor blade, without realizing.

Monstrance — a vessel, in Catholic tradition, in which the consecrated Host is placed, to be exposed for the adoration of the faithful.

Without knowing why, I had started making a list of words that meant God, or related to worship, or words I thought could describe God. I found I was transcribing large portions of dictionaries, encyclopedias. I couldn’t explain it, I just felt compelled. I was probably obsessed. I wasn’t a believer but neither an unbeliever then.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 550: When They Come Back

When They Come Back was originally published in Crossed Genres (Issue 22), in October 2014.

Frank though not explicit reference to human sexual anatomy

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:08 — 34.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

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. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Escape Pod 548: A Prayer at Noon

A Prayer at Noon appeared originally in Triangulation: Parch (Volume 7) edited by Stephen V. Ramey.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:09 — 30.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

A Prayer at Noon

by John Shade

It was a day into the third sun when the patchwork man rode into town.

I remember the dust scrabbling at my eyes, and the folk that had gathered on the sidewalks to watch him plod past on a chugging, nearly-spent machine horse. As he came to me, the stitched segments of his face shifted into a new configuration, a hinted smile or frown, and his torso swung around, my breath seized. I’d been around men before, but he was something different. Something more. He was ugly, though, with a wiry frame and a large head set on top, wads of crusted hair sprouting between the seams across his skin. He rode toward us, confident as anything. I braced as he reached down, but he plucked my little sister, Ester, from the crowd instead. The town went silent but for the constant shuffle of wind-blown sand.

With his god-strength, the patchwork man tossed Ester into the air like an aerialist, and set her down to swelling applause. The dread was broken. Our prayers had been answered at last.

(Continue Reading…)

hot mature website