Posts Tagged ‘Reincarnation’

Genres: ,

Escape Pod 1040: Gods and Spirits Our Witnesses

Escape Pod 1040: Gods and Spirits Our Witnesses is an Escape Pod original.

Loss of an infant

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:47 — 36.8MB)

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

Show Notes

Sponsored by Mixtape Stories

Gods and Spirits Our Witnesses

by S. C. Mills

We met in a public-access data booth at night, during yet another tropical storm, long after the angry god of the sea had gorged himself fat on Earth’s old icecaps. Rain hammered the booth’s cracked plastic walls with such brutality that I didn’t hear you walk in. I was staring down the chart of jacked-up daily data rates when you sidled into the tiny booth with me, half-lit by a stuttering streetlight. Close enough to touch, in a space meant only for one. You squinted at me, like you were calculating whether I was friend or foe.

You were scrawny, soaked to the bone, no doubt seeking any shelter from the sea god’s rage. Only a year or two younger than me, maybe, but your slim shoulders made you seem half my size. And the way your pretty wet eyelashes clumped together ’round your storm-gray eyes sent my blood rushing and my chest swelling with an ancient kind of pride. Like I was born to do nothing but give you all I had.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 1039: The Many Rebirths of Karina Morita

“The Many Rebirths of Karina Morita” first appeared in 2025 on Tim’s Patreon

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:16 — 44.3MB)

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

Show Notes

Sponsored by Mixtape Stories

The Many Rebirths of Karina Morita

by Tim Pratt

My problems all started when I died.

People didn’t die too often on my hab, or anywhere else on the planets and stations of the Standard Curve; we cured illness and aging long ago, but there were still occasional deaths by misadventure. I was flying an ultralight to the outdoor sex and ice cream festival on the Melodious Archipelago when an unexpected updraft sent me spinning out, straight into the side of a familiar mountain (it was hollowed-out and contained an eternal-night dance club). As the meticulously textured stone surface rushed toward my face, I thought, “Oh well, at least I had a backup yesterday.” I’d lose my memories of the morning, sure, but my post-breakfast orgasms hadn’t been any better than usual, and the hollandaise on my dodo eggs was only okay too.

I was supposed to wake up in the cozy rebirth lounge of my own home on the Shimmering Terrace, my consciousness decanted into a fresh clone, as I’d done a dozen times before. Instead, I awoke naked and shivering, stretched out on a long table in a small room with silver walls, while a short woman wearing a pure white jumpsuit and an elaborate crown of stainless steel smiled down at me. “Karina Zephyrus Morita!” she said. “Welcome to the Interval. I’m your technician. I see this is your first time passing through. Don’t worry, we’ll get you assessed and processed quickly.”

I shrieked and sat up on the table. Was I in some kind of clinic? Had there been a mishap with the cloning process? I felt fine, and the bits of me I could see didn’t appear malformed. “What’s happening? Who are you? What is this place?”

(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 855: A Home For Mrs. Biswas

“A Home For Mrs. Biswas” previously appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine (April 2021)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:13 — 58.5MB)

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

A Home For Mrs. Biswas

by Amal Singh

Once she saw the red sands stretch across miles, craters as big as the stadium her father played hockey in, and golden spires shimmering brighter than Amritsar’s Golden Temple, Aparna Biswas didn’t want to live on earth. Of course they were a far cry from her own backyard where, in summers, she would sit on a cane chair and watch the bougainvillaea bloom the shade of a bride’s blush,“string of pearls” flowers wrapped around the wooden railing on her porch, eating a succulent dussehri aam as a pair of ducks swam in the small pond she liked to call her Pacific. But those summers only existed behind a dim haze of memory. She would take a living planet over a dying one any day.

“Beta, I think I might find god there,” she said to her son, tearing her gaze away from the Mars hologram. “Build me a home on that planet and all will be mangal.” She chortled at her own joke. Puns on the red planet had filled the internet, and ever since Sunehri, her granddaughter, had taught her how to use a phone, she kept finding these odd little information trinkets.

“I might have to break all our deposits and still not be able to book a single one-way ticket, Maa,” said Nishant, her son. “Forget about building a home.” In his eyes too, there was a deep yearning to go to the Red Planet. He stood near the window of the living room of his Chembur apartment, looking at the once blue sky, blotted out by an eternal grey smog which was here to stay.

“But our PM said in his last speech there was a lottery system,” she said. “And you know how lucky I am.” It was true. Stories of Aparna Biswas’s luck were splattered on walls of Kolkata, and the gullies of Bombay.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 723: How Did it Feel to be Eaten?

Escape Pod 723: How Did it Feel to be Eaten? is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:39 — 42.6MB)

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

How Did it Feel to be Eaten?

By Amit Gupta

“I was an elderberry,” I announced, glowing with pride.

“How did it feel to be eaten?” he asked.

It seemed an odd question, but a response came unbidden, so I voiced it, “It was an honor.” My words surprised me, but they felt true.

“The Queen of England ate me,” I added. How did I know this? Who was he? My cheeks flushed with embarrassment. I didn’t feel like a berry. Did berries feel embarrassed?

“I didn’t know she was the Queen at the time,” I admitted.

“Yes,” agreed the man who I could not see and did not know. “Let’s try another.”

I was in again and felt immensely powerful. I sparkled in the sun. The land beneath me rose, I stood, and I felt a caress on my shoulder. A child. We danced. I rolled, crested, and rumbled; she banked and cut on her board, gliding gracefully along me, her speed blowing droplets of me right off her wetsuit. We became one.

We reached the shore, and I crumbled, making room for others like me, and others like her.

That was a short one.
(Continue Reading…)

Escape Pod 589: Seb Dreams of Reincarnation

Escape Pod 589: Seb Dreams of Reincarnation is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:05 — 49.6MB)

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

Show Notes

 

 

 

 

Thanks to our sponsor, ARCHIVOS – a Story Mapping and Development Tool for writers, gamers, and storytellers of all kinds!

Seb Dreams of Reincarnation

By Aimee Ogden

They unplugged Seb’s neurodes at the end of his ten-year tour of duty. He’d known it was coming, had been told before he ever signed the contract that if they left him in any longer his health would start to deteriorate. What they hadn’t mentioned was that his health would deteriorate anyway. Once, Seb had kept six hundred people alive, responded instantly to their needs, and their wishes too when those fell within his power. He had carried them all in his belly, made them part of himself. He thought he would implode under the emptiness of having lost them.

Today, though, his only job was to leave his apartment: something he hadn’t done since the first week he’d moved in. He had groceries delivered, the occasional takeout, odds and ends as he needed them. Supermarkets and corner stores might as well have been on another planet. If they were, he might have actually cared to visit them. He stared out his ninth-floor window while trying to summon up a reason to go out, let alone the will to do so. His fleet-assigned shrink had given him the task and called it homework. Which was of course the exact opposite of what it actually was. Out-of-home work.

(Continue Reading…)

hot mature website