Posts Tagged ‘Ibba Armancas’

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Escape Pod 944: How to Keep Your Cool If You’re a Mech First Day on the Job (Part 2 of 2)

How to Keep Your Cool If You’re a Mech First Day on the Job was originally published in The Colored Lens in spring 2022.

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How to Keep Your Cool If You’re a Mech First Day on the Job (Part 2 of 2)

By Vera Brook

(…Continued from Part 1)

Jenna gave herself a few moments to seethe in silence before she spoke, to make sure her voice was calm. “I can’t move.”

“Did you hear that?” Daron took a swig of his water, then bit into his sandwich. He looked around the table at the others. Not even a glance at Jenna. “She can’t move.”

“It’s a problem,” Skye admitted.

“Definitely is,” Irelyn agreed.

“Most unfortunate.” This from Khalil.

There was a pause as they waited for Uruk, but he was staring at his computer screen. He jumped up when Irelyn’s elbow poked his ribcage. “We’re still good. No delays. I’m keeping track.”

“We’re talking about the newbie, Uruk,” Irelyn said. “She can’t move.” (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 943: How to Keep Your Cool If You’re a Mech First Day on the Job (Part 1 of 2)

How to Keep Your Cool If You’re a Mech First Day on the Job was originally published in The Colored Lens in spring 2022.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (44.1MB)

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Show Notes

https://designfor-me.com/project-types/self-build/revolutionising-construction-the-rise-of-3d-printed-houses/

https://www.gira.com/uk/en/g-pulse-magazine/building/3d-house-germany#

https://builtin.com/articles/3d-printed-house#:~:text=Nowadays%2C%20industrial%2Dsized%203D%20printers,transported%20to%20its%20final%20location

How to Keep Your Cool If You’re a Mech First Day on the Job (Part 1 of 2)

By Vera Brook

Damn, the exoskeleton was hot. Two minutes strapped into the smart harness with its thick exospine and the oversized, carbon-fiber limbs that grew from it, and sweat pooled between Jenna’s shoulder blades, over her own spinal column. The whole thing hummed with electronics and throbbed with support motors. Nothing like the black top, mini skirt, and sneakers she’d worn on her previous job, waiting tables and tending bar at Lazy Dog’s.

But the pay was three times what she made in tips, and she had the evenings to herself.

She was moving up in the world. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 925: The Ballad of Starburst Smith

Escape Pod 925: The Ballad of Starburst Smith is an Escape Pod original.

Contains harsh language.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:52 — 41.5MB)

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The Ballad of Starburst Smith

by David Marino

“Did you read the terms and conditions?”

“Fuck you, I read the terms and conditions!” Does this bearded receptionist not know she’s Starburst Smith? Does he not know she’s the Rock Prophet who will herald in a new era of music that will soon sweep her into fame and fortune, that will soon have her selling out Dodgers Stadium and Madison Square Garden?

Even if soon has been soon for fifteen years

(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 860: Solo Cooking for the Recently Revived

“Solo Cooking for the Recently Revived” was previously published in the Zombies Need Brains anthology “Apocalyptic” in June 2020

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:39 — 49.4MB)

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Solo Cooking for the Recently Revived

by Aimee Picchi

I hide my right hand behind my back when Jamie steps into the rehab center’s kitchen. Like all the rest of the reintegration counselors, he’s a Survivor. And Survivors always stare at our scars.

“Let’s start with our motto,” Jamie says.

The class intones: “Food is life.”

My friend Myra hitches her thumbs on her belt, cinched to the smallest hole, and rolls her eyes.

“And?” Jamie prods.

“To cook is human,” we finish.

Every time I say it I imagine the motto will fix me, erase my scars and everything else that happened in the last year. Get me one step closer to Carter. I once confided my belief to Myra and she laughed. That motto’s not for our benefit, sweetie, she had said. It’s so they can believe we’re still just like them.

Jamie gestures for me to join him at the front of the classroom, the home-ec lab inside a former middle school. About twenty of us are lined up at ovens and sinks and Formica countertops where students scratched blocky initials inside of hearts. I don’t want to think about what probably happened to the kids.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 845: Across the River, My Heart, My Memory

Across the River, My Heart, My Memory originally appeared in Fireside Magazine June 2021.

Language, suggestions of violence.

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

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Show Notes

Hey everyone, Alasdair here – hope you’re doing okay. The summer months are upon us, which means two things – hat weather for yours truly, and the part of our year when costs are high and support tends to dip. We know things are tight everywhere at the moment, and that includes us. For those of you who support us already, thank you so much. We hope you’re enjoying the great new CatsCast episodes. If you’d like to join them, we’ve got tons of options for you at Patreon and PayPal. Even a one-off at Ko-fi makes a big difference, or check out our great new swag store – maybe like me you need a hat! It all adds up, and helps us bring you the best in free audio fiction every week. Thanks, and enjoy this week’s episode.

Promo music:
“Sneaky Snitch” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Across the River, My Heart, My Memory

By Ann LeBlanc

1.

I am Michelle’s artificial pancreas, stolen cleanly and carefully from her gut. The surgeons are quick; before I can finish my hard reset, they place me inside you.

I don’t even have time to say goodbye to Michelle’s other organs. I know her heart — and all its memories of Tobin — is dead. Did the taser kill the others too? Why am I the only one awake — alive?

I can’t say goodbye to Michelle, because she’s dead. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 766: The Unrepentant

Escape Pod 766: The Unrepentant is an Escape Pod original.

This story has content notifications for language and violence.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:45 — 60.5MB)

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The Unrepentant

by Derrick Boden

First time I saw her, she was bleeding from her left nostril with a nightstick jammed under her chin. Officer Vang was twisting her arm all kinds of unnatural behind her gene-hacked body, pressing her face to the exterior window with four thousand miles of freefall and filth and societal decay on the flip side. The lights in the cramped hallway–alpha quadrant, fourteenth floor of this godforsaken space elevator–painted her face a rusty orange. She was just another dirtside ghoul from the Rot, weaponized by another shadow corporation that had repurposed Earth’s battlegrounds into one big biotech testbed. Officer Vang–an over-muscled knot of a woman that never missed a chance to make example of one of us refugees–had the ghoul jammed against the hull so hard her boots were dangling like the guerrilla corpses in the town squares back home. She should’ve been howling in pain.

She was laughing.

I’m a shrewd woman, a survivor. Should’ve shuffled right past along with the seventy-some other scrag refugees, all beleaguered and shock-eyed with horror. We weren’t twenty hours from Processing–another week before we’d reach Distribution at the lift’s orbital counterweight–and the illusion of freedom had already bled dry. We’d won the lottery, escaped the Bloc, only to be stamped and sorted and packed into this long vertical handoff from one indenture to the next.

Maybe that’s why I stopped. Something in her laugh said nice try. Sure, we’d spent our respective lives on opposite sides of the war–ghoul against scrag, Rot versus Bloc. Sure, defiance is a cheap substitute for hope. But goddamn did that laugh sound just right, just then.

Besides, I had a plan. I’d been tracking Officer Vang since her immigration crew had subdermaled KUIPER INC down my forearm and tossed me onto this lift. I had a better shot at seeing my twenty-second birthday back in the dirtside scrabble than mining the Kuiper belt. Fucking sponsors.

Only hope now was to carve my own fate.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 732: At Her Fingertips

This story was first published in Betwixt Magazine

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:55 — 60.8MB)

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Show Notes

This is the second in a special series of space-themed stories for May 2020.

At Her Fingertips

by Jason Kimble

Ten fingers, ten toes. That’s the baseline for a healthy kid, right? You’d have thought I’d be a bonus, what with eighteen fingers. Guess they all have to function before you count them.

As Deficiencies go, mine’s not so bad. The Skew was a hell of a thing, and everyone on the Rim’s still feeling it. I knew a guy once had a fully formed jaw down around his nuts. I only wish I was kidding. On the upside, the hinge didn’t work, or it would’ve been a nightmare sitting down.

So, yeah, I have extra digits grown out from the top of my primary knuckles. You get used to working around them, though. Makes some things tenser for me when I’m elbow-deep in an engine than it does for people without them, but it only took once or twice pinching them before my reflexes amped up. And, like I said: could be worse.

“Acaja!”

Case in point: I could have a mouth that doesn’t close all the way like my boss, Harvey. He literally never shuts his trap.

“Acaja, get the hell over here!”

No matter how much I wish he would.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 711: Carols on Callisto

Escape Pod 711: Carols on Callisto is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:55 — 58.0MB)

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Carols on Callisto

By Deborah L. Davitt

On the surface of Callisto, Rebecca Fox struggled with tangled, 3D-printed branches, her fingers clumsy inside the bulky gloves of her suit. The swollen belly of Jupiter dominated the horizon, a swirl of muted white and orange, and the Great Red Spot stared like a baleful eye. The landing lights of ships crossed the planet’s face, heading for the port. The vibration of their engines in the regolith rumbled underfoot as they landed.

“This is idiotic,” a voice broke in over the radio as her companion bounce-walked to her, holding another set of printed branches. “It takes us twelve years to orbit the sun. Why do we need to celebrate Earth’s holidays here? We should be creating our own.”

“The kids like it,” Rebecca defended. She had this conversation with Dieter at least once every three months. “They enjoy designing their trees at school, which is a good use of their CAD skills. They like seeing something they’ve made go up. The plastics get recycled, so it’s not a waste.”

“It wastes time.”

“You get to charge hours for this,” she reminded him lightly. “Hush.”
(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 687: Four of Seven

Escape Pod 687: Four of Seven is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:41 — 50.0MB)

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Four of Seven

By Samantha Mills

In the waning light of an artificial sun, Camelia Dunlevy climbed a mountain with her sister on her back. Delilah was a hollow weight, bird-boned from reconstructive surgeries, unbreakable.

The trouble wasn’t her bones, but her lungs. She panted in Camelia’s ear, unaccustomed to altitude, a small sound that might as well have been a war drum. Camelia couldn’t call for help, she couldn’t leave Delilah behind, she couldn’t walk the road for fear of company men.

And her sister was still giving bad directions.

“There’s a path up the western slope,” Delilah whispered, her breath hot and tickling. “I swear it.”

“There’s no path.”

“I came up once, with Aster.”

“Then you were on a tram.”

“Yes. I saw it out the window.”

“I don’t know what you saw, but it wasn’t a path!”

An explosion rocked the mountain, pelting them in pebbles and moon dust. Camelia dashed behind the nearest bush—a sickly, transplanted thing, hardly any cover—and counted the seconds before the familiar grind-whir-scream of a strikebreaker started up. Distant, but not distant enough.
(Continue Reading…)

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