Escape Pod 178: Unlikely

Originally published in: Asimov’s, January 2008.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:48 — 26.0MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains profanity. Including in the closing song.

Special closing music: “Mandelbrot Set” by Jonathan Coulton.

Unlikely

by Will McIntosh

“The mayor seems to believe there’s something to this,” Tuesday said.

“He’s desperate. Clutching at straws.”

“So why did you agree to meet?” Tuesday asked, her Keds back on the black and white tile floor.

Samuel paused while the waitress plunked down two glasses, followed by big metal milk shake tumblers. His strawberry milkshake looked as thick as cement. Damn, did he love this place.

“Professor Berry said there was an easy way to prove him wrong: meet with you on and off for a week. If the city’s accident rate didn’t go down when we were together, and back up when we were apart, he’d return his consulting fee to the city.” The shake made a satisfying plopping
sound as he poured it into the glass. “His ideas are wacked. ‘Data mining for non-intuitive connections?’ You can smell the bullshit from three pastures away.”

Escape Pod 177: Usurpers

Originally appeared in Azimov’s

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:29 — 23.7MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R. Contains strong language, strong emotions, and moderate violence.

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Usurpers

By Derek Zumsteg

King spots a knock-off cluster, glowing sunny in the rain, too fit, perfectly proportioned. Tear off some burnished bronze, never-burning skin. Shove it under a microscope, see the designer signature, Chinese characters like tattoos on the necks of college girls.

All ten ranked cross-country runners this season took family trips to China after school let out last year. When they’d returned and established dominance, King took the Asics guy up on his offer to join the experimental training program. Found himself running by himself, following daily instructions from an email address. King knows there’s a machine on the other end, some oracle in some data center chewing on his performance data full time. Responds only to email, immediately, all hours.

Escape Pod 176: How The World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth

Escape Pod 176: How The World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:07 — 21.4MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains war, invasion, exodus, mass extinction, religious revival, and a lot of mud.

Referenced Sites:
Resonance FM
Reality Break Podcast

How The World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth

By Rachel Swirsky

Humans laid the foundation for the sixth apocalypse in much the same way they’d triggered the previous ones. Having recovered their ambition after the Apocalypse of Serotonin and rebuilt their populations after the Apocalypse of Grease, they once again embarked on their species’ long term goal to wreak as much havoc as possible on the environment through carelessness and boredom. This time, the trees protested. They devoured buildings, whipped wind into hurricanes between their branches, tangled men into their roots and devoured them as mulch. In retaliation, men chopped down trees, fire-bombed jungles, and released genetically engineered insects to devour tender shoots.

The pitched battle decimated civilians on both sides, but eventually — though infested and rootless — the trees overwhelmed their opposition. Mankind was forced to send its battered representatives to a sacred grove in the middle of the world’s oldest forest and beg for a treaty.

Escape Pod 175: Reparations

Originally appeared in Fortean Bureau. (June 2004)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:48 — 19.1MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains mass destruction and graphic descriptions of the wounded.

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Reparations

By Merrie Haskell

I just swab my arm and administer the cocktail, a booster for my radiation immunization. The taste of brass fills my mouth in seconds, and I know that the cocktail has flooded my system. With this stuff burbling inside, I can stare down three sieverts without blinking, or, more importantly, losing my immune system, teeth, hair, and intestines.

When I finish with my dose, I grab the skin on the newbie’s arm, swab her and shoot her up, too. “Ow!” She jumps and rubs her arm. I watch carefully to see her smack her lips at the taste. “You could’ve warned me.”

“No time,” I say, doctoring Ken and the others just as abruptly. We’re pressed, and they know it.

We’re all nice and anodized on the inside at 8:12. We’re waiting for 8:16, or thereabouts. There aren’t any atomic clocks in 1945, so all times are approximate, internally speaking. And from here on in, there’s no point speaking any other way.

Escape Pod 174: Private Detective Molly

Originally published in Strange Horizons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:30 — 26.5MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. A somewhat dark kid’s story; contains parental tragedy and complex social issues.

Private Detective Molly

By A.B. Goelman

That’s when I see my new boss. Four feet of trouble. Brunette variety. Tear tracks cutting through the dirt on her face, wearing jeans that were already old when Molly Dolls were nothing more than molded plastic and fantasy homes.

She’s no idiot, though. “I want the Debutante persona,” she says. “You’re still not Debutante Molly are you?”

I like a girl who doesn’t need me to explain everything. “That’s right, kid,” I pull my blonde hair back into a pony tail and cover it with my fedora.

“Why do you keep coming out as a Petey persona?” Poor kid sounds like she’s about to cry. Don’t blame her for wanting Debutante Molly. Debbie’s the kind of girl who reminds me why God bothered with Adam’s rib in the first place. As wholesome and satisfying as a virgin daiquiri on a hot day. Everything I’m not. “Petey’s not even a girl’s name,” the kid says.

Escape Pod 173: Robots Don’t Cry

Rated R. Contains profanity and some sadness.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:23 — 29.1MB)

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Robots Don’t Cry

By Mike Resnick

Every now and then we strike it rich. Usually we make a profit. Once in a while we just break even. There’s only been one world where we actually lost money; I still remember it — Greenwillow. Except that it wasn’t green, and there wasn’t a willow on the whole damned planet.

There was a robot, though. We found him, me and the Baroni, in a barn, half-hidden under a pile of ancient computer parts and self-feeders for mutated cattle. We were picking through the stuff, wondering if there was any market for it, tossing most of it aside, when the sun peeked in through the doorway and glinted off a prismatic eye.

“Hey, take a look at what we’ve got here,” I said. “Give me a hand digging it out.”

Jeffrey DeRego’s surgery and financial assistance

I’ve been in e-mail contact today with Jeffrey DeRego’s wife Cindy. She tells me that he had open heart surgery yesterday to bypass five blocked arteries. The surgery was successful and he’s expected to go home sometime next week.

If anyone cares to know for purposes of sending cards or flowers, etc., he’s at the Catholic Medical Center in Manchester, New Hampshire. You’re also welcome to send cards via us (Jeffrey DeRego, c/o Escape Artists Inc., PO Box 1538, Stone Mountain GA 30086) and I’ll see that they get forwarded to him.

I asked if any financial assistance would be useful, and without getting into overly personal details, the answer is “yes.” The DeRegos aren’t in a good position right now in terms of employment, and while they’re applying for state assistance, surgery of this magnitude is still certain to have a very harsh impact. Escape Artists will be making a contribution, and with Cindy’s permission, I’m asking the Escape Pod listenership to help out.

I’ve set up a PayPal address just for this purpose under our corporate account. If you’d like to help Jeff out, please send your contributions via PayPal to derego@escapepod.org. (I hope to have a better link on the sidebar by tonight.) We’ll cover PayPal fees, so 100% of funds donated will go to defray Jeff’s and Cindy’s medical expenses. I’ll keep that PayPal address open through September.

Please follow your conscience on whether to help. Jeff’s given us some of our favorite EP stories, and I’m happy to do whatever I can for him. If you see fit to help him out too, I’m sure he and his wife would be very grateful. Thanks for your attention.

Escape Pod 172: Union Dues: Tabula Rasa

Escape Pod 172: Union Dues: Tabula Rasa is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:41 — 28.0MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R. Contains profanity, sexual innuendo, and a bit of soap opera.

Referenced Sites:
Playing for Keeps by Mur Lafferty

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Union Dues: Tabula Rasa

By Jeffrey R. DeRego

I raise my hand and she stops chattering. “Just tell me who you are and where I am.”

She freezes and blinks twice. “Tell you where you are? Cap, you’re home. This is the Cleveland Pyramid. I’m Sarah Shadow. You don’t recognize me?”

“That doesn’t mean anything to me!” I stand up. Frustration washes over me like heat from a blast furnace, and worse, my stomach is rumbling. “I woke up today. The first person I saw was you, but I’ve never seen you before in my life. I figured as long as I was in the hospital, or wherever, I’d start to remember, but it’s a blank. Where am I, what is this place, what are you people?” I point at her costume. “And that, what’s that, are you part of a circus act or something?”

EP BONUS: Playing for Keeps by Mur Lafferty

The Escape Pod episode is still coming up later today. But by special permission of Mur Lafferty, here’s a special bonus for you: the complete text of her novel, Playing for Keeps, in PDF format. It’s officially launching August 25th, so be sure to buy it from Amazon then!

Playing for Keeps

Meetup at Dragon*Con!

First: my apologies for recent delays in getting Escape Pod out; in the last couple of weeks it’s hit the feed Friday afternoons rather than late Thursday. It’s probably going to happen again this week. Personal business lately has included me losing my day job, finding a new and much better day job in the space of a couple of weeks (I start Tuesday), and taking on some short-term obligations to fill in the gaps. Expect more on that in an upcoming metacast In the meantime I’m realizing I’m having to get much better organized with a lot of Escape Artists work, not for efficiency but for necessity. So yes, things are late; but I still don’t expect to miss any weeks, and I hope that the lateness will be short term.

Now to the news: once again, Escape Pod and Minx’s Polyamory Weekly will be hosting a joint meetup at Dragon*Con. Just like last year, we’ll be doing a group brunch on SUNDAY, AUGUST 31 AT 11:30 AM, at the Gordon Biersch Brewpub. It’s about a mile north from the hotels, but an easy walk or cab ride. This time we have the restaurant’s upper mezzanine reserved, so it’s like having the place to ourselves. Ask at the front for the Escape Pod meetup.

Generally, I expect to hit very little programming at this year’s D*C. My intent for almost the entire con is just to hang out at the bars or parties, and socialize and relax. If you’d like to join me, follow my Twitter feed to find out where I am or drop me a line to met me know where you are. And if you know where the good parties are — let me know too!

Thanks, and we’ll have the next EP up as soon as possible. (It’s a Union Dues story, if that helps with the waiting.)