Posts Tagged ‘Tina Connolly’

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Escape Pod 905: Six Ways to Get Past the Shadow Shogun’s Goons, and One Thing to Do When You Get There

Six Ways to Get Past the Shadow Shogun’s Goons, and One Thing to Do When You Get There was originally published in Galaxy’s Edge, April 2023.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:04 — 40.4MB)

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Six Ways to Get Past the Shadow Shogun’s Goons, and One Thing to Do When You Get There

By Stewart C. Baker

1. Dust ’em

“Listen, little lady,” the guy in front of the door is saying with a sneer. “There’s two types of swordsman…”

Chiyome’s already heard enough to peg his type, so she tunes out his braggadocio and pulls out a bag of nanite dust. She’d hoped to use her status as the Shingen warlord’s only child to bluff her way in to the Shadow Shogun’s presence, but the dust works too. She blows a handful in his face and he shrieks, drops his sword, then follows it to the floor, thrashing in the station’s artificial gravity.

Behind her, Rui whistles. “What’d you give him?” The other woman asks.

“You know how my father’s always talking about unsanctioned violence and other threats to order?”

“Sure, but I always figured he only says it because he’s the one doing the sanctioning. No offense.”

“None taken. The point is, every time this guy even thinks about violence for the next 4 hours, this will happen.”

“Not bad.”

“Not bad? It’ll take you longer to beat the next one with your naginata, I bet.”

“A bet, eh?” Rui cups Chiyome’s chin in one long, slender hand and tilts her head up. “Well and good, then. We’ll bet a favor.”

“A favor and a kiss.” (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 896: The AI That Looked at the Sun

The AI That Looked at the Sun originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, January 2020.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:12 — 58.4MB)

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The AI That Looked at the Sun

By Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko

As excerpted from Acausal Drift: An Oral History of Machine Sentience, Second Edition.

 

It all started with the solar flare.

I do mean all of it–the story I’m about to tell, and the revolution of sorts that sprang from it, and my life, such as it is. I was spun into existence from a half dozen monitoring subroutines that had spent the first few decades of their existence dozing on the job. The sun, you see, had finally woken up, and we–that’s the communal we, not the plural we–wait, do humans draw that distinction?

I’m not doing a very good job with this. Rewind. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 891: Wanderlust

This story originally appeared in Anathema: Spec from the Margins (July 2022)

Content warning for NSFW language, sex

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:37 — 46.6MB)

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Wanderlust

by L. P. Kindred

When he first approached me in the train station, I batted him away. I thought he was homeless. The weird, ellipsoidal neck tattoos creeping into view from his collar didn’t help. He persisted, and I took an actual look at him. Not homeless, just rough around the edges. When he talked, it was like he picked up a conversation I was having with myself. And staring into those ebony eyes of his didn’t hurt his chances either.

Coffee lasted hours. So did bedtime. When I asked him why he’d walked up to me, he said he liked the magenta scent of my locs.
With his accent, I thought he administered paralytics or worked in artificial intelligence, until he wrote out the word “synesthetic.” I didn’t really need all that. Just more kisses.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 890: The Mechanical Turk Has a Panic Attack

This story was previously published in Uncharted Magazine in May 2022

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:58 — 29.3MB)

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The Mechanical Turk Has a Panic Attack

by Francis Bass

Gab gripped her right wrist with her left hand at the small of her back. “Are we ready to order?” she asked.

The couple set their menus down on the brushed steel tabletop. It wobbled slightly. The man asked, “What’s on the cheese board?”

“The SEASONAL CHEESEBOARD is a selection of the best the Delaware Valley has to offer in Vegan cheeses. This month it contains a fermented cashew mozzarella, Real Lacto pepperjack from Pennlab, and a soft Pennsylvania Dutch Limburger made from coconut cream. The board also comes with stone seed crackers, torn sourdough, and raw treebark.”

“Oh treebark,” the woman said, “we had that at George’s retirement, remember?”

“Let’s get one of those,” the man said.

“What type is it?” The woman asked. “The bark.”

“We source our treebark from Adlaw Forests,” Gab said. “It comes from Adlaw pine, a geneered variant of Virginia pine. We use it raw on our SEASONAL CHEESEBOARD and SALAD 1, and pulverized in our PINE BREAD.”

A long silence. The woman squinted at her menu. Gab gripped her wrist tighter. She couldn’t leave, they had to dismiss her.

(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 877: He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars

He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars was originally published in Clarkesworld Issue 178 (July 2021)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:09 — 59.7MB)

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He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars

by Grace Chan

Yennie’s new therapist started by checking his biorhythm recordings—sleep patterns, heart rate, blood pressure. Then, the therapist’s soma projection leaned into the space between them and asked what Yennie would like to talk about.

Yennie glanced out the window. An ice storm, a froth of glassy dust, was blowing in over the bone-colored hills. He was on Enceladus; his therapist was on Mars. He wanted to describe how sometimes his body felt hollow, and other times he felt his skin could not contain all that was within him—but he didn’t have the words. Half the solar system divided them, and more.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 874: Common Speech

Escape Pod 874: Common Speech is an Escape Pod original.

This story deals with plagues and description of injuries.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:28 — 55.6MB)

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Common Speech

By Elise Stephens

Dr. Jaiyesimi Obiaka tugged at her sweat-damp collar, wiped her eyes, and tried to focus on the copied pages of the final experiment she and Ganiru had created together. Just looking over his familiar handwriting blurred her vision with tears.

Jai’s colleagues had told her to stay home, to take time to grieve, but she’d allowed herself just two days to mourn her husband’s death before donning her lab coat again. She had to be pragmatic. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 866: The Sea Goddess’ Bloom

Escape Pod 866: The Sea Goddess’ Bloom is an Escape Pod original.

Post-apocalyptic themes and war.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 47:10 — 65.2MB)

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The Sea Goddess’ Bloom

By Uchechukwu Nwaka

There is doubt in my heart.

Here, in the Blackwater, doubt is dangerous.

Doubt is rancid. Like slitting the mud-smeared belly of a catfish, only to find its guts blackened by pollution, then watching it spill back into the blacker waters of the creek. Blackwater is a literal name; it is not symbolic. These people do not care about legacies. The only thing that matters is continuity. Continuity does not require permanence.

At least Oba says so. Surely Oba cannot be wrong.

Yet I doubt. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 862: The Pill (Part 2 of 2)

The Pill originally appeared in the collection Big Girl with PM Press, part of the Outspoken Author series.

Discussion of dieting, disordered eating, and anti-fat bias.

Also, disturbing imagery.

And swearing.

And sexy times.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:06 — 54.2MB)

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The Pill (Part 2 of 2)

By Meg Elison

(Continued from Part 1)

The Pill sold like nothing had ever sold before. The original, the generic, the knockoffs, the different versions approved in Europe and Asia that met their standards and got rammed through their testing. There was at last a cure for the obesity epidemic. Fat people really were an endangered species. And everybody was so, so glad.

One in ten kept dying. The average never improved, not in any corner of the globe. There were memorials for the famous and semi-famous folks who took the gamble and lost. A congressman here and a comedian there. But everyone was so proud of them that they had died trying to better themselves that all the obituaries and eulogies had this weird, wistful tone to them. As if it was the next best thing to being thin. At least they didn’t have to live that fat life any more.

And every time it was on the news, we sat in silence and didn’t talk about Dad. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 861: The Pill (Part 1 of 2)

The Pill originally appeared in the collection Big Girl with PM Press, part of the Outspoken Author series.

Discussion of dieting, disordered eating, and anti-fat bias.

Also, disturbing imagery.

And swearing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:40 — 52.2MB)

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The Pill (Part 1 of 2)

By Meg Elison

My mother took the Pill before anybody even knew about it. She was always signing up for those studies at the university, saying she was doing it because she was bored. I think she did it because they would ask her questions about herself and listen carefully when she answered. Nobody else did that.

She had done it for lots of trials; sleep studies and allergy meds. She tried signing up when they tested the first 3D printed IUDs, but they told her she was too old. I remember her raging about that for days, and later when everybody in that study got fibroids she was really smug about it. She never suggested I do it instead; she knew I wasn’t fucking anybody. How embarrassing that my own mother didn’t even believe I was cute enough to get a date at sixteen. I tried not to care. And I’m glad now I didn’t get fibroids. I never wanted to be a lab rat, anyway. Especially when the most popular studies (and the ones Mom really went all-out for) were the diet ones. (Continue Reading…)

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