Posts Tagged ‘technology’

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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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Escape Pod 1014: Here Instead of There (Part 2 of 2)

Here Instead of There was originally published in COMMUNICATIONS BREAKDOWN, 2023, Jonathan Strahan, Ed.

Includes some grade-A cursing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:21 — 47.6MB)

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Here Instead of There (Part 2 of 2)

By Elizabeth Bear

(… Continued from Part 1)

With the launch gone, there was just one rubber dinghy with an outboard motor stowed under the floor of the hangar, along with two kayaks, a sailboard, and a jet ski in an abjectly terrifying state of disrepair. There were twenty-three human souls on the pod, plus Henry.

Doc and her wife went up and down the steads alerting our neighbors that they needed to clear out. By the time they came back, we’d gotten the fugs organized into evacuation groups. We packed six people into Doc’s boat, in a space meant for four. Four more into the dinghy with one girl who was sober enough to steer and seemed competent to run the motor.

That left Kai, Miriam, Henry, me, and ten dirtbags. I didn’t even suggest that we give the Filth Is A Protest girl one of the kayaks and turn her loose, a level of self-restraint I was smugly proud of. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1013: Here Instead of There (Part 1 of 2)

Here Instead of There was originally published in COMMUNICATIONS BREAKDOWN, 2023, Jonathan Strahan, Ed.

Includes some grade-A cursing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:58 — 43.0MB)

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Here Instead of There (Part 1 of 2)

By Elizabeth Bear

Waking up sick in a punk house shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody so I don’t know why it always came as a surprise to me. My head throbbed so bad I couldn’t tell the difference between the hangover, my sinus headache, and Kai pummeling their drumset over in the yacht hangar.

The Kai part also wasn’t unusual. The Crash’s drummer is our early riser. That’s the Devil’s pre-Hell punishment on us all. But even hungover, I never woke up with a head this full of pain.

Henry must have seen me twitch, because five people racked out between me and the galley all said “Oof!” in a row. Suddenly my arms were full of wriggling beagle mutt and stank. At least the sov-cit types who left this pod a wreck before we squatted in it didn’t leave it full of fleas as well as trash and feces. (I choose to believe that the feces were from a dog rather than a toddler.) And there aren’t any ticks this far from shore. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1009: The Combat Pilot’s Dictionary

The Combat Pilot’s Dictionary was originally published in Aurealis #167, Febuary 2024.

Wartime action and injury.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:32 — 43.8MB)

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The Combat Pilot’s Dictionary

By Arden Baker

Boot

Rookie pilot. See also – nugget.

You called us ‘boots’ when we turned up to the flight deck that first morning I laid eyes on you.

The halogen lighting shone down onto the makeshift parade ground with a harsh insistence matched only by your loud drill calls.

You looked the part. Milspec features matched with an impeccably pressed grey uniform. Hair shorn close to the scalp to fit the Z94-OptiGuard Quiklok Aerospace Aviation Helmet that you wore in combat. Broad shoulders and piercing eyes. Tall and built like a true Martian. Rust in your blood. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1007: 35 / F / Lane’s Creek, Oklahoma

Escape Pod 1007: 35 / F / Lane’s Creek, Oklahoma is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:56 — 47.1MB)

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35 / F / Lane’s Creek, Oklahoma

By Hans Ege Wenger

Sandra loaded. Boxes and pallets, mostly. Full of avocados, computer chips, plastic toys, etc. All carefully placed by her rubber-faced grippers into the trucks that darted in and out of the warehouse bays.

On a good day, Sandra loaded something interesting. A heavy, oddly shaped package, requiring her to adjust her first person view goggles and sit forward in her chair, lips pursed in concentration. Or a tantalizing, vacuum-packed parcel bound for near Earth orbit. Once, an opaque tank, filled with flickering red-black fish. It brought a little variety to a day viewed through the cameras of a four-foot-tall, yellow robot. (Continue Reading…)

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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 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 994: Magical Girl Antifa War Machine

Escape Pod 994: Magical Girl Antifa War Machine is an Escape Pod original.

NSFW. Includes violence, death, mental health issues, global disaster, explicit sex, consensual BDSM, war trauma, a brief mention of COVID, and a brief mention of rape.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:59 — 49.9MB)

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Magical Girl Antifa War Machine

By Esther Alter

XYLIA

We were at the bottom of a hole, a new construction site that went deep into the bedrock. I was the first to touch the artifact, a thing that didn’t quite have shape or color. I grabbed it. My new consciousness slammed into my mind so fast that there was just enough time for only one last wholly-human thought: You’re a girl, you fucking idiot.

My new form was sleek. Mathematically perfectly curved. Hyperfeminine in the truest sense. Breasts extending into six dimensions. A tall, lithe, highly reflective body. A smooth face with eyes burning with seductive rage. And strength, immense strength. I flexed and felt a distant star flicker a warning. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 992: Nerves Into Circuits

Nerves Into Circuits was originally published by Heartlines Spec on November 30, 2023

Includes mention of chronic pain and suicidal ideation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:39 — 37.1MB)

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Nerves Into Circuits

By Lyra Meurer

Metal arms descend to press skin-soft conductor strips over my shoulders. The Neurasuit has been in warming mode for a few minutes–my overwrought senses accept the lines of heat like a gift. Despite my anxiety for the fight, my trapezius muscles relax, creaking in the silence. Released from the tension, my vertebrae settle into place with small snaps, one or two with each breath.

Wires snake through my hair, massaging the scalp pain I didn’t notice was there. More swirl around my neck, tickle between my toes, seeking the overabundant bristles of my nerves. The Neurasuit folds around me with a hiss and a click, shutting out the cold night air. Before the systems launch, before the fight begins, I have a moment of perfect comfort in a little space built for me. (Continue Reading…)

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