Escape Pod

Planetbound

By Nancy Fulda

There’s a moment that comes, the first time you step on the rim of a planet, when you suddenly realize how breakable you are. When you finally understand that despite the bone density treatments, despite the braces cradling your back and legs, despite the half-dozen hands that support your first faltering steps down the hallway, you will never be more than a hair’s breadth from disaster. A false step, an unexpected nudge, even the tilt of your own head could send you toppling. It’s worse – much worse – than you expected, and for five panicked heartbeats you consider retreating. It’s not too late to grab a flight back to the orbitals, to float again in those serene, majestic habitats. But no. There is something to be learned here; something important. Something that cannot be understood except through the eyes of a floater. And so you grit your teeth and slide your foot awkwardly forward, into this strange new existence.

It is a perilous reality, chaotic and unintuitive. Cloth leaps in strange directions. Objects zip away if you release them. Even the sounds are different. It’s like someone has erased the laws of the universe and written the equations anew.

On the next step something goes wrong and you jolt sideways. Shouts. Hands beneath your shoulders. Your arm flails outward and knocks a vase from a table. It clatters to the ground and stays there, water clinging to the tiles like a living creature.

Author : Beth Goder Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Adam Pracht EP592: When All the Clocks Are Wrong is an Escape Pod original. When All the Clocks Are Wrong By Beth Goder Jen locks her bike and heads towards the theater. She needs a break from studying, but more importantly, […]

When All the Clocks Are Wrong

By Beth Goder

Jen locks her bike and heads towards the theater. She needs a break from studying, but more importantly, she needs to find Ash, who has her Soil Science notes. Jen promises herself she won't try to kiss Ash--they'll see the midnight movie, Ash will hand her the notes, and then, summer vacation. That's it.

Before she reaches the theater, Jen feels a familiar frisson, disorienting, dizzying. When the red lights of the marquee blink 12:45 a.m., Jen isn't surprised. The clock thing is happening again. She left her house with enough time to meet Ash outside, buy a ticket, grab a soda. But now, it's 12:45 a.m. One hour later than it should be.

All her life, time has disappeared like this.

She buys a ticket--it's not too late to catch the end. In the darkness, she stumbles between the rows but can't find him. The movie lights up the screen--a romantic comedy or a tragedy--she's too nervous to pay attention. When the credits roll, Jen is pushed out with the exiting crush. No Ash.

Jen passes Soil Science. She doesn't see Ash until sophomore year, when he introduces her to his girlfriend.

Author : Bo Balder Narrator : Amy H. Sturgis Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Adam Pracht A House of Her Own originally appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction September 2015. Thanks to our sponsor, ARCHIVOS – a Story Mapping and Development Tool for writers, gamers, and storytellers of all kinds! A House of Her Own By […]

A House of Her Own

By B. Balder

Aoife was only eleven when she caught the little house in the forest. She surprised it as it drank from a puddle, half-hidden under a writhing tree root as large as her own body. Fast as an eel, she snaked her hand around it and held on tight. It was no bigger than a strawberry, all soft and furry and yellow. Even in the gloom of the giant, bad-tempered trees, it shone like a candle flame.

"House," she whispered, "you're mine now."

It couldn't answer back yet, but she knew it understood.

She showed her catch to Mama. Mama hugged her and told the big house they lived in what Aoife had found.

House spoke from the walls. "Good girl. Show it to me, little one. Let me see if it's the right kind."

Aoife clenched her fist tighter around the little house until it squirmed against the pressure. Sometimes the big hice didn't approve of the little ones, for reasons no human could guess at. She didn't plan on letting anything happen to her house.

Author : Caroline M. Yoachim Narrator : Stephanie Malia Morris Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Discuss on Forums Four Seasons in the Forest of Your Mind originally appeared in the the May/June 2015 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Thanks to our sponsor, ARCHIVOS – a Story Mapping and Development Tool for writers, […]

Four Seasons in the Forest of Your Mind

By Caroline M. Yoachim

Spring

My tree is a pyramidal cell in the prefrontal cortex of your brain.

There are millions of us here, in the forest of your brain, each with our own region to tend. My region is a single tree, for I am newly born, just as you are. It is a lovely tree, with a long axonal root and majestic dendritic branches that reach outward to receive the signals of other neurons. Like you, the tree is in a springtime state of frenetic growth, reaching its delicate tendrils to nearby cells and more distant targets. The Omnitude has given me a simple task, a message that comes to me via the entanglement: Save this tree.

Author : Aimee Ogden Narrator : Matthew Hamblin Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Discuss on Forums EP589: Seb Dreams of Reincarnation is an Escape Pod original.         Thanks to our sponsor, ARCHIVOS – a Story Mapping and Development Tool for writers, gamers, and storytellers of all kinds!  Seb Dreams […]

Seb Dreams of Reincarnation

by Aimee Ogden

They unplugged Seb's neurodes at the end of his ten-year tour of duty. He'd known it was coming, had been told before he ever signed the contract that if they left him in any longer his health would start to deteriorate. What they hadn't mentioned was that his health would deteriorate anyway. Once, Seb had kept six hundred people alive, responded instantly to their needs, and their wishes too when those fell within his power. He had carried them all in his belly, made them part of himself. He thought he would implode under the emptiness of having lost them.

Today, though, his only job was to leave his apartment: something he hadn't done since the first week he'd moved in. He had groceries delivered, the occasional takeout, odds and ends as he needed them. Supermarkets and corner stores might as well have been on another planet. If they were, he might have actually cared to visit them. He stared out his ninth-floor window while trying to summon up a reason to go out, let alone the will to do so. His fleet-assigned shrink had given him the task and called it homework. Which was of course the exact opposite of what it actually was. Out-of-home work.

Author : Effie Seiberg Narrator : Summer Brooks Host : Divya Breed Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Discuss on Forums Rocket Surgery originally appeared in Analog, 2016.         Thanks to our sponsor, ARCHIVOS – a Story Mapping and Development Tool for writers, gamers, and storytellers of all kinds! Rocket Surgery By Effie Seiberg We’d tested […]