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Escape Pod 609: Wasps Make Honey

Escape Pod 609: Wasps Make Honey is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:46 — 42.3MB)

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Wasps Make Honey

By Penelope Evans

The scrap heaps at the edge of the settlement are taller than the average colony building. They offer up next to nothing good. But the factory doesn’t want either of us anymore. Power cells don’t come cheap now. In fact, they barely come at all. “Sometimes I think we should give up on this,” Jax tells me, leaning on a big busted-up engine piece—an oscillator from a collector class ship or something of equal size. This is her half of the argument, where she begs me to give up. She has a lot of arguments, and they are all at least mildly convincing and a little hurtful. I’m getting old (true), she’s getting old (also true), sooner or later her drivers will fail and I could be doing better things with my time (true and true).

“I’m not giving up on you anytime soon.” This is my half. My half is not an argument, more a refusal to argue. It infuriates Jax. It makes her tv-screen face go fizzy red and yellow. I’ll hike up the closest heap and heft out something funny and wave it at her, and if she’s really sulking, sometimes toss it down at her so she has to dodge on many-times repaired joints. And some days, she’ll chuck something back, so I have to dodge too, even with my bad knee.
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Escape Pod 608: Even the Queen

First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction in 1992. Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Short Story.

Candid discussions of the existence of sex and reproductive systems. Some cursing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:58 — 78.2MB)

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Even the Queen

By Connie Willis

The phone sang as I was looking over the defense’s motion to dismiss. “It’s the universal ring,” my law clerk Bysshe said, reaching for it. “It’s probably the defendant. They don’t let you use signatures from jail.”

“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s my mother.”

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Escape Pod 607: Red in Tooth and Cog

Originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 2016

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:25 — 77.5MB)

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Red in Tooth and Cog

By Cat Rambo

A phone can be so much. Your memory, your edge against boredom, your source of inspiration. There’s always an app for whatever you need. Renee valued her phone accordingly, even celebrating it by giving way to the trend for fancy phone-cases. Its edges were bezeled with bling she’d won on a cruise the year before, and she’d had some tiny opals, legacy of her godmother, set into the center.

It was an expensive, new-model phone in a pretty case, and that was probably why it was stolen.

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Escape Pod 606: Home Sick

Originally appeared in Use Only As Directed, Edwina Harvey and Simon Petrie eds., Peggy Bright Books (Australia) in 2014.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:39 — 38.0MB)

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Home Sick

By M. Darusha Wehm

I was encoding a batch of classic ebooks when the ulu-aliki walked in to the library, the outdoors scent of gardenias and overripe mangoes following him. “Afternoon, chief,” I said, pushing my chair back a bit. Joseph Seru spoke Tuvaluan with his family and the other council members, but his English was so much better than my Tuvaluan would ever be. Besides, even though less than ten percent of us were Aussies or Kiwis, the official language on the SPIT was English.

“Hey ya, Sally,” he answered, lacking his usually jovial demeanour.

“You looking for something in particular?” I asked. The island’s chief was a voracious reader and a bit of a film buff. I usually gave him first crack at the new titles I managed to snag off the satellite internet connection.

“Sort of,” he said, the last remains of his smile disappearing. “You, I guess.”

I frowned. “What’s up, chief?” I asked.

“I’ve got something for the blog.”
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Escape Pod 605: Straight Lines

Originally appeared in Mothership Zeta, July 2016.

Cursing, Mental distress

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:10 — 33.2MB)

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Straight Lines

Naru Sundar

This time they sent someone in a suit, neutral gray silk with utterly glorious creases, monofilament thin.

“I’m Xiao Quan-Fei. They said you like to call yourself Em?”

Emergent Behavior in full, but I always hated the pontificating tone in the name. Fucking shipwrights. Fucking irony too, but let’s not go there yet. Xiao doesn’t begin with questions. Not like the seven others before her, cold military men and women jumping into reconstructions and maps and comm chatter. Xiao is different. Xiao just sits there.

I’m allowed a tiny little virtual. It’s in the charter, as much as they like to snigger at it. It’s still a prison, still a cramped little low bandwidth room with none of the expansive feel of space and star outside my hull. Xiao sits in the rectangular plastifoam chair and examines the coffee table. There are books atop it, unlabelled, empty, just for show. Each spine aligns with the edge of the table, two centimeters from each side.

Fuck. She moved it. She moved one. Not on purpose. Almost by accident, or is it on purpose? I can’t tell. But now that spine is a touch off. I can feel it. I can feel the angular deviation down in my gullet, down in every algorithm-scribed bone of me. It’s Io all over again. I built this damn space for myself and now she comes and moves a book.
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Escape Pod 604: Given Sufficient Desperation

Originally appeared in Defying Doomsday, edited by Tsana Dolichva and Holly Kench. Twelfth Planet Press, 2016.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:51 — 45.1MB)

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Given Sufficient Desperation

By Bogi Takács

An ice cream cone.

A ceramic mug—brown with a single green stripe around the rim.

A smartphone—I don’t recognise the brand. It’s been a while.

Two sheaves of corn.

A plush caterpillar toy from some cartoon.

A table—rather worn, I’d say Danish Modern, but I’m not sure.

I need a break.
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Escape Pod 603: An Equal Share of the Bone

Escape Pod 603: An Equal Share of the Bone is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:01 — 33.0MB)

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An Equal Share of the Bone

By Karen Osborne

To kill a theriida, you need gunboats and suits, laser cutters and open-mawed cargo bays, brawn and a stout heart, and God on your side.

We, of course, had none of that.

I learned in the merchant marines to never shoot a theriida with a standard railgun. They’ll thrash and writhe and put angry holes through your hull, and eating vacuum is nobody’s idea of a good trade run. No: a theriida’s distributed brain needs a distributed solution. If you don’t have a spinal lance capable of wide-range dispersal, move on. Don’t even try. Back in the academy, before Eliot and I signed on with Garuda, we used to inflate massive plastex balloons with pressuregel and deploy them beside our training vessels, taking turns at the lance control. It wasn’t anything like the real thing.

Inexperienced spacers often believe that the glimmering purple sac in a theriida’s bioluminescent belly is the animal’s brain, but that is only because we mammals forget that the universe is a multifarious, violent parade of a hundred thousand ways to be mortal. But we weren’t inexperienced. Our captain, Nate, had thousands of hours of piloting time. I was the best gunner this side of the Mercy War. Eliot could make a working engine out of spit and vomit. That’s why we believed we could handle a theriida kill.

Hubris. That’s the word. (Continue Reading…)

Escape Pod 602: Trash Talk

Originally published in Simian Publishing’s Future Embodied anthology in 2014.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:00 — 23.3MB)

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Trash Talk

By Holly Schofield

I’m not a complainer, not me. I roll with the punches. I’ll be just another dead trash collector in about ten minutes but, hey, that’s okay. My son won’t die and, here’s a bonus, my life insurance policy will pay out.

Unless they consider it suicide.

Here we are, hugging in the middle of my living room, me in my robo-assist, my fists locked behind Ricky’s head, up high, like a boxer’s. Ricky, that’s my son, he’s pinned right against my chest.

I can’t see much now, things are blurry; must be sweat that’s in my eyes. Maybe that’ll save me ’cause it’ll short out the servos sooner or later. That was a joke. I’m hanging tough. By the way, guys, before you do anything down at the cop shop with this voice record, edit out all the emotional crap Ricky and I said earlier at the beginning, like right when it started recording, okay? Kinda embarrassing.
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EA Metacast: New Websites

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:30 — 6.0MB)

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Show Notes

Hi there! A short metacast to tell you all about our new websites. Transcript follows for those who who prefer to read along.

Transcript

(Alasdair) Hi there! This is Alasdair!

(Marguerite) And this is Marguerite!

(Alasdair) And we’re looking a good deal shinier. The EA family of podcasts has all new websites, thanks to Jeremy Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios and Scott Pond for the incredible new logo designs! And to Marguerite for riding herd on the project for most of this year.

(Marguerite) Why thank you! So you may be asking yourself, why? I mean, we’re podcasts, right? Most of the time you listen to our shows, not read them. Well, we’re glad you asked.

(Alasdair) First off, we were a decade-old company with decade-old websites. It’s true – aside from maintenance from our heroic two-fisted IT Barbarian, Graeme Dunlop, EA’s never had a major upgrade. That won’t cut it for a digital publisher, especially one with 1900 episodes under its belt. It was a major undertaking, and past due.

(Marguerite) Plus now we’re in a great position to make that vast back catalog a whole lot easier for you to get at. But we ran into a chicken and egg problem – all the solutions we had in mind needed new interfaces and graphics. You probably saw that when our old logos got upgrades so we could be a launch offering at Google Play. But to make the leap to ‘Tubes and ‘Camps and ‘Fys’, needed a ground-up refresh.

(Alasdair) So, big thanks to Jeremy and Scott, and Marguerite

(Marguerite) (thank you!)

(Alasdair) and Graeme and the tireless work of the editorial teams and admin staff who kept this project upright and moving.

(Marguerite) And most of all, from all of us, thank YOU. Thank you do our donors and listeners, new and veteran, on PayPal, Patreon, Dwolla and more. Thanks to everyone who says hello at a convention, votes for us in awards and reviews the great stories we publish. Thank you to our authors, narrators, guest hosts and artists.

(Alasdair) And stick around for more.

(Marguerite) More tales to tell.

(Alasdair) One story told well. that’s what we do. And we promise you, it’s true.

Escape Pod 601: Wet Fur

Originally published in Asimov’s, August 2014.

Isolated cursing.

Grief.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:33 — 52.9MB)

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Wet Fur

By Jeremiah Tolbert

You can tell the dog owners when they board the plane; they see the black cloud hovering in the first row and their eyes widen in shock, then narrow in fear, followed by a glimmer of a smile, a hope as they glance at so many occupied seats. A hopeful smile that seems to say: “not for me. Not for mine.”

Unease settles over the plane, like a heavy, acrid scent. A few passengers throw suspicious glances at you, and one elderly woman even stops for a moment beside you, opens her mouth as if to speak. You hold your breath. She closes her mouth and shuffles toward the rear of the plane

You breathe again. You try to ignore the man seated next to you. You focus on the safety talk.

When the flight attendant buckles her fake belt, she glances at the cloud off her shoulder, then smiles apologetically at her audience. Like it’s her fault, or perhaps the airline’s? There’s nothing she can do, or anyone else.

You sniff. You smell damp fur. You frown, wondering, perhaps, how that could be? You don’t know what strange links lie between memory and nose, but we do.
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