Archive for EP Original

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Escape Pod 961: Mathball

Escape Pod 961: Mathball is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:41 — 46.7MB)

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Mathball

By Larry Hodges

You are a baseball fan, sitting in the centerfield seats eating an overpriced hot dog. You are wearing a baseball cap, but not a batting helmet, of course. (Why would that be an issue? Hmm…)You smile brightly, but all will not end well for you unless you pay close attention.

“Play ball!” cries the umpire, crouching behind the plate. The crowd roars. The pitcher stares down at the catcher, waiting for the sign. They are the home team. Thousands cheer for them.

The batter waves his bat menacingly. He is a hero of this story.

Six scientists sit at their desks behind home plate, three on the third-base side, three on the first-base side. The three on the first-base side work for the pitcher and we don’t care about them—they are the enemy. The three on the third-base side work for the batter. They are from MIT. These latter three are the real stars of this story.

Well… mostly. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 959: This Little War of Ours

Escape Pod 959: This Little War of Ours is an Escape Pod original.

Brief mentions of suicide and suicidal ideation, and an apocalypse setting.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:02 — 43.1MB)

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This Little War of Ours

By Arden Baker

 

SECURE PRIORITY COMMUNIQUE

distribution SOLITAIRE, keyword MASQUERADE, source PENTACLE

FROM: TRIPLE INTENT

TO: ASPHODEL

BEGIN CONTENT

 

Even if you’re my enemy, I’m glad to hear from you. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 955: Endymion

Escape Pod 955: Endymion is an Escape Pod original.

Contains transphobic slur, adult language, and brief but graphic violence

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:38 — 45.3MB)

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Endymion

by Sylvie Althoff

It’s green here—green and wet. The twittering of birds in the treetops pauses as one voice, as if the forest is holding its breath.

A lone eagle wheels silently overhead. Then the sun pierces the clouds, scattering drops of gold across the misty valley, and with a lusty yawp from the eagle, the forest begins its song anew.

I suck in a breath of the bright, sunny air. Dinosauric ferns waft their brown-speckled leaves in the gentle breeze. The rocks and tree trunks are covered with blankets of emerald lichens. The sound of rushing water fills my ears.

“What do you say, Mac? I told you it wasn’t so bad out here.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 951: The Scientist Does Not Look Back

Escape Pod 951: The Scientist Does Not Look Back is an Escape Pod original.

Death, grief and loss.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:27 — 46.4MB)

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The Scientist Does Not Look Back

By Kristen Koopman

Feb. 17, 3:40 AM. Audio notebook for new project: revival of a clinically dead patient, 36 year old male, died of hypothermia and shock.

The technician at the morgue hesitated when releasing him to me. I’m not surprised, with the tone that took hold of my voice as I corrected her Mr. to Dr. as she took down my details. When I gave her my name, her pen stalled over the paper—a giveaway that his parents had called before I arrived. I should be grateful that she released him to me anyway, honoring my legal right to the body. I should be grateful for so much, I suppose, even if it doesn’t feel like it, to have this opportunity to—to not let his story end in tragedy. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 949: A Foundational Model for Talking to Girls

Escape Pod 949: A Foundational Model for Talking to Girls is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:14 — 39.2MB)

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A Foundational Model for Talking to Girls

By Brian Hugenbruch

“Hey Marty,” Mom asks, “got a moment?”

I cringe whenever Mom’s voice has that tone to it. I don’t know what she’s going to say; but if I’ve learned anything in my thirteen years on this desolate, oxygen-deprived rock, it’s that she’s going to find a way to say the most mortifying thing possible. It would be impressive, the way that every sentence excavates my stomach—if it weren’t my stomach she was mining!

Okay, that’s unfair. Maybe this time it won’t be so bad?

“That girl who just walked past us. Why didn’t you ask her out?”

Or not. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 948: Thank You for Doing Business with the Xyb’lor Principality

Escape Pod 948: Thank You for Doing Business with the Xyb’lor Principality is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:15 — 33.8MB)

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Thank You for Doing Business with the Xyb’lor Principality

by Rachel Meresman

Jaxon was not a connoisseur of art, but he could identify a work’s salient features. And the salient features of these particular works were that they were valuable, lacking any obvious security system, and right there.

“Don’t even think about it,” Pen’s voice said pleasantly in his ear.

“I think the figurine on the left is solid karynite,” Jaxon murmured into his comm, low enough not to trigger the translation device on the table.

“You can’t steal it,” Pen said.

“You never want me to steal anything,” Jaxon said. “It really puts a damper on our relationship.”

“True,” Pen replied. “But stealing from the Xyb’lor would be suicidal. Which is why no one will think to look for us here.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 947: Rupert Weard and the Case of the Adamant Annihilist

Escape Pod 947: Rupert Weard and the Case of the Adamant Annihilist is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:58 — 65.0MB)

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Rupert Weard and the Case of the Adamant Annihilist

By Rob Gillham

Rupert Weard leapt into the drawing room, escaping a hallway dense with impossibly angled, tentacular horrors trying to sell him insurance.

“Ye gods, it’s bedlam out there,” he said. “Just look at this, Boswell.” He hurled his folded newspaper at me like a frisbee.

I occupied my usual spot on the rug by the fireplace. I’d been happily finishing off the remains of a cauliflower when the unwanted periodical came streaking across the room, forcing me to hop into frantic evasive action.

“Oi!” I said, coughing up half-chewed bits of Brassica oleracea. “Do you mind? That was my breakfast.”

“It’s eleven o’clock, you idle rabbit.” Rupert slammed the door firmly shut on a particularly determined sales rep attempting to squeeze its incompatible geometry into the room. (Continue Reading…)

Escape Pod 945: Walking with Thorny

Escape Pod 945: Walking with Thorny is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:27 — 42.3MB)

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Walking with Thorny

by Stetson Bostic

Hitchhikers clung to Tasi’s pants as he neared the edge of the forest. He brushed them off while walking and looked ahead to the open field that showed through the final rows of trees. The golden grass flowed in the sunlight, appearing welcoming and warm, and easy to traverse after hours of trekking through the chill of the dense forest.
He’d been careful to avoid the Jagged oaks—stout trees with roots that threatened to trip and thorns grown to grab. Staring at the warm open land had become hypnotic, and Tasi lost focus for just a moment as he passed by one of the final few oaks before the tree line.

He walked too close and felt a dull push, a pinprick of pain in his side. Tasi stumbled out of the woods into the grass, touched at the wounded spot, and felt the thorn.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 942: The Eye of Applethorpe

Escape Pod 942: The Eye of Applethorpe is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (67.6MB)

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The Eye of Applethorpe

by E J Delaney

Úna’s dad once said to her: “You never know what you’ve got until it’s gone.”

Spring had turned and they’d come cycling up the highway, fourteen kilometres north through a land bedecked with rocky upthrusts and pink-tinged blossoms. The Big Apple loomed before them, appraising its empty kingdom from atop a stubby pole.

Úna hadn’t understood. Where the Apple’s expression was unambiguous—a spray-painted frown—her dad’s was hidden beneath thickets of beard. He rested on his tiptoes astride the bike, as big and improbably balanced as a granite boulder. Sunlight danced through his cherry-candle bristles.

Úna held his hand. To her the world had seemed perfect. She was happy and loved, and she’d recently befriended a turtle where Quart Pot Creek curved past the homestead.

What could he have had, she wondered, that wasn’t there anymore?

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 941: The Concept Shoppe: A Rocky Cornelius Consultancy

Escape Pod 941: The Concept Shoppe: A Rocky Cornelius Consultancy is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 47:30 — 65.7MB)

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The Concept Shoppe: A Rocky Cornelius Consultancy

By Andrew Dana Hudson

“This place is trash, garbágio, blechalicious,” Rocky Cornelius said appreciatively. “All we gotta do is, as they say, sublevel the vibe.”

“Really? You think so?” The greengrocer, Franklyn, wrung his hands—still caked with black soil from showing her the beet rows in aisle five—a sure sign that Rocky’s negging, one of the most reliable techniques in her consultant toolbox, was working.

They stood in the canned goods section of Primal, soon to be Westwood’s newest and hippest boutique bodega slash survival goods retailer. The paper labels on the tins had been artfully patinated by some design school dropout, ripped and torn to leave just a slash of Roma tomato picture here, a glimpse of fava bean logo there. The shelves looked half-caved in, but were in fact quite secure, welded into place at zig-zag angles. Simulated California sun streamed, dappled, through an ivy-frosted, hole-in-the-roof-shaped skylight.

The idea of this ‘concept shoppe’ was to make shoppers feel like they were looting an abandoned store in a post-apocalyptic, collapseporn paradise. Rocky quite liked the idea. No one wanted to be a “consumer” these days. People—especially Californians, who had lately been through so much—wanted to think of themselves as “survivors,” disaster-hardened protagonists in a return-to-their-roots story of rebuilding and social rejuvenation. It’s just that, if they could afford one of the new quake-proof condos springing up in Westwood, they wanted to do so without having to worry about tetanus, botulism, scurvy, or gluten. (Continue Reading…)

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