Escape Pod

Author : Andrea Kriz Narrator : Valerie Valdes Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “There Are No Hot Topics on Whukai” originally appeared in Lightspeed Magazine in May 2021. There Are No Hot Topics on Whukai by Andrea Kriz The day the dMods shut down Skeleton Caves, Esko put on her VR […]

An Incident on Ishtar

By Brian Trent

Her family tried very hard to never use the word “crazy” with her. So therefore, they didn’t say it was crazy that she was applying for a Venusian post as Tier 3 Balloon Specialist.

She tried explaining her reasons to them:

I have valuable skill-sets for the Ishtar colony.

They countered: you don’t do well with people.

Her response: there are only 612 people throughout Ishtar’s nine modular habitats. There are 2.1 million people here in San Antonio.

Venus is hell, Mom interjected, and you’re afraid of heights, Melissa! Do you hear yourself?

Venus is hell below the clouds but I’ll be living above them, sweeping along with the transterminator currents on oxygen-filled aerostat balloons that provide both breathable air and the lifting gases required. Statistically it will be safer. No chance of making another Terrible Mistake.

The smiling masks of her family fell away. Older sister Diane exploded at her. Is that what this is about? Are you out of your mind? You—

Melissa didn’t hear the rest. She marched out of her parent’s house and took the nearest PDT to the local office of ExtraPlanetary Colony Careers.

Why do you want to go to Venus? the interviewer asked her.

I have valuable skill-sets for the Ishtar colony, she replied.

They were quick to agree.

Author : Laurence Raphael Brothers Narrators : Adam Pracht and Summer Brooks Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Houseproud” originally appeared in the SciFutures “City of the Future” anthology and also won the Berkeley Machine Intelligence Research Institute prize for Intelligence in Fiction. Houseproud by Laurence Raphael Brothers “Bye, Domus!” “Goodbye, Ken,” […]

Dandelion

By John Shade

Before the border wall, we scatter.

Dandelions.

The nanomachines grind us down and we float up and through the cracks, molecule to molecule, like holding hands.

Leena hesitates, is left behind. She stands apart on the wrong side of the wall. She presses her hand to the cool, shaded concrete. We feel it through the upload.

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.

Author : Jordan Chase-Young Narrator : Justin Thomas James Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story appeared in the Fall 2020 issue of The Colored Lens (October 15, 2020) The Vaulting Vandals of Termina Celeste (Part 2) by Jordan Chase-Young Our boots echoed through the fuselage as we hurried to the […]

Author : Jordan Chase-Young Narrator : Justin Thomas James Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story appeared in the Fall 2020 issue of The Colored Lens (October 15 2020). The Vaulting Vandals of Termina Celeste (Part 1) by Jordan Chase-Young Back then, we liked to scour the docks of Termina Celeste […]

Love and Supervillains

By Caroline Diorio

The gals here at the Raleigh Women’s Asylum for the Nefariously Gifted have a little saying they like to share with the newbies: fuck a superhero once, shame on him; fuck a superhero twice, shame on you.

Well, technically my first super wasn’t a hero. Or even all that super. Davey could control metal with his mind, which came in handy whenever the little gears in the ice cream machine at our after-school job got jammed, but he couldn’t budge anything heavier or thicker than a can of tomatoes. He auditioned for the Southeastern Sentinels at their headquarters in Charlotte two months before our high school graduation, and while they didn’t laugh directly in his face, they thanked him for his “radical vulnerability” and told him they would “give him a call if they ever needed his skillset,” which was almost worse. He was a sweet boyfriend, though, always fixing my necklaces when they broke. We lost touch after we broke up for college, but in hindsight, I really should’ve looked him up back when I still had Internet access. Or any access to the outside world.

Deepo 12

By Jeff Hewitt

Nothing made Deepo 12 feel more alive than doing its job.

Its actuators sighed as another cassette slid from its workstation, tinted blastic masking the rainbow sheen of the wafers inside. Dim strip lights curved over the protective casing as it clicked into place.

Then Deepo 12 waited.

Meep.

The Tyrant Lizard (and Her Plus One)

By John Wiswell

Dinosaurs don’t want to kill you; they just don’t care that you’re there. More people have been sat on by brontosauruses than have been eaten by all the theropods combined. Since I joined security on the archipelago, 82% of dinosaur-related human casualties were from tourists who got too close during mating season. And the four times I’ve seen a deinonychus attack someone, they’ve always left them uneaten. Why? For the same reason bears and sharks tend to leave victims alive: because humans taste like shit.