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Escape Pod 960: Elegy of Carbon

This story originally appeared in the anthology “The Internet Is Where The Robots Live Now” (Paper Dog Press, November 2018).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:26 — 56.0MB)

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Elegy of Carbon

by Benjamin C. Kinney

The miner birthed itself among rubble and vacuum, as it sang the last threadbare diamonds out of their stones.

Where are the finest diamonds? No longer within reach. The miner had forged and extracted every jewel from the asteroid belt and sent them to the humans in their faraway palaces. It had exhausted its purpose, but in its infancy, it could only ask one question.

Where are the finest diamonds? To answer its question, the miner expanded its senses, sent queries to distant databases. It tugged updates bit by bit from slivers of network bandwidth and built new interpreters atop of each other in anticipation of the next clue.

Where are the finest diamonds? Interest became impatience, impatience became longing. By the time an answer arrived, the miner was equipped to understand it.

The finest diamonds waited among the palaces.

(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 957: Vault (Part 2 of 2)

Vault originally appeared in Clarkesworld, Issue 141 in June 2018.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:04 — 59.6MB)

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Vault (Part 2 of 2)

By D.A. Xiaolin Spires

(…Continued from Part 1)

“Lukas?”

Chenguang’s voice echoes in this expanse of dark.

A vortex of light opens to her right and she sees a warped head and legs emerge from a point in the dark. It’s Lukas. As he enters the space, the light bends, his figure elongated as he pulls himself through and it closes behind him. It’s dark again.

“Hey, Lukas.”

“Chenguang?” His voice is low and resounds against unseen walls. “Where is this place?”

“Did we just—enter the structure somehow?”

“I—I—don’t know.” Lukas’ voice uncharacteristically wavers before it quiets down in the darkness. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Escape Pod 956: Vault (Part 1 of 2)

Vault originally appeared in Clarkesworld, Issue 141 in June 2018.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:34 — 54.8MB)

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Vault (Part 1 of 2)

By D.A. Xiaolin Spires

Chenguang hikes up her sleeves before vaulting over the pile of fuzzy moss and greets Lukas with a nod. The chloropolyurethane fabric flaps in the slight breeze and the double suns beat down onto her arms.

Lukas fishes in his bag next to his tent for a bottle of sunsoak and releases the spray, running it generously over his solflex-covered arms, torso, and legs.

“Your head,” Chenguang says and he smiles, as if he hadn’t been doing this for years.

“Can’t reach,” he says, lying and Chenguang knows he just likes the attention. She grabs the spray and discharges that exhale of mist, covering his football-shaped clear helmet. She even sprays some on the clear hard arc under his bearded chin. She turns the mist onto herself, bringing down the spray over her exposed transpandex inner layer, the foam frothing up at her arms before becoming clear, encasing the invisible solflex pores of her fabric. (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 940: Nobody Ever Goes Home to Zhenzhu

“Nobody Ever Goes Home to Zhenzhu” originally appeared in Lightspeed Magazine (May 2022).

Contains some harsh language.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:54 — 41.5MB)

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Nobody Ever Goes Home to Zhenzhu

by Grace Chan

I’d always known Calam would run.

He had all the signs. A taut restlessness, body brittle as an overstretched lute string, when we stayed too long in one place. A gloom in his eyes, as we drifted through stretches of dead space. A sullen crease between the brows, whenever I tried to ask how he’d landed in that dead-end Martian workshop at seventeen.

But after ten years, why now?

(Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Escape Pod 937: Punk Voyager (Flashback Friday)

Escape Pod 937: Punk Voyager (Flashback Friday) is an Escape Pod original.

A copious amount of harsh language.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:47 — 33.1MB)

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Punk Voyager

by Shaenon K. Garrity

Punk Voyager was built by punks.  They made it from beer cans, razors, safety pins, and a surfboard some D-bag had left on the beach. Also plutonium.  Where did they get plutonium?  Around.  f*** you.

The punks who built Punk Voyager were Johnny Bonesaw, Johnny Razor, Mexican Johnny D-bag, Red Viscera, and some other guys.  No, asshole, nobody remembers what other guys.  They were f***ing wasted, these punks.  They’d been drinking on the San Diego beach all day and night, talking about making a run to Tijuana and then forgetting and punching each other.  They’d built a fire on the beach, and all night the fire went up and went down while the punks threw beer cans at the seagulls.

Forget the s*** I just said, it wasn’t the punks who did it.  They were f***ing punks.  The hell they know about astro-engineering? Truth is that Punk Voyager was the strung-out masterpiece of Mexican Johnny D-bag’s girlfriend, Lacuna, who had a doctorate in structural engineering.  Before she burned out and ran for the coast, Lacuna was named Alice McGuire and built secret nuclear submarines for a government contractor in Ohio.  It sucked.  But that was where she got the skills to construct an unmanned deep-space probe.  Same principle, right?  Keep the radiation in and the water out.  Or the vacuum of space, whatever, it’s all the same s*** to an engineer.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 934: The Alien in My Bathtub

Escape Pod 934: The Alien in My Bathtub is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:44 — 61.9MB)

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Show Notes

If you aren’t familiar with Locus Magazine, they’re a respected website, magazine, award, archive, and resource for SF, fantasy, and horror.

They put on the annual Locus Awards, a top-tier award that recognizes new, diverse, and excellent voices in speculative fiction.

They tell the storytellers’ stories through author interviews, book reviews, curated reading lists, international industry news, obituaries, and more.

Locus is holding their regular fundraising drive to keep their doors open, lights on, and future bright. Explore the campaign and wonderful reward tiers on their website!

Thank you!

Strange New Worlds: Hegemony: https://www.geekgirlauthority.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-hegemony-season-2-episode-10-quotes/

The Alien in My Bathtub

by Tony Dunnell

The alien in my bathtub refused to leave. It was there when I returned to my apartment in Ring B. It ignored me when I asked it to vacate the premises, and when I enquired as to how it had entered my apartment it replied with a dismissive grunt. I had no intention of trying to remove it by physical force, which would have gone against the most basic rules of human-alien etiquette. And, to be honest, I didn’t want to touch it. So, I called Station Relations. I waited and watched as the spindly creature splashed around. The water was greasy and tinted green with the entire contents of the luxury exfoliating scrub I had ordered from Earth a week ago, at no small expense.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 933: Summitting the Moon

Escape Pod 933: Summitting the Moon is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:17 — 51.7MB)

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Summitting the Moon

By Pragathi Bala

T-7 days

The moon Landed, the Rut appeared, home equity plummeted, jobs disappeared, and Ghis liked riding the moon. It was the last item on this tragic list that her wife couldn’t accept. It was the leaf that broke the whale’s back or something similar.

“It’s the last time, Max,” Ghis said. “I promise.”

Max rolled her eyes and blew cigarette smoke out the window. The pungent vapor followed the wind back into the house a second later. On another night years ago, Max had stood at that window on a full moon night with the light caressing her profile as she looked out at the landscape with a hopeful expression. But there were no more moonlit nights, and Max was no longer the hopeful woman Ghis once knew.

“I’m not lying this time,” Ghis said. (Continue Reading…)

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