Escape Pod

Author : Kristene Perron Narrator : Divya Breed Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Artist : Ashley Mackenzie Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 569: Artemis Rising – Safe Harbour (Artemis Rising 3) is an Escape Pod original. Artemis Rising returns to Escape Pod for its third year! This month-long event highlights science […]

Dr. Mbalu and the Butcher’s Daughter

by Megan Chaudhuri

With a raspy pop, the cell sprayer in Rebecca’s hand sputtered one last drop of fur progenitor cells. Ignoring her stiff back, she leaned over the culture vat and daubed the cells onto the pink, gel-sculpted contours of a cheetah’s back muscles. The gel rippled; Rebecca held her breath as the reflexive shiver splashed the surrounding nutrient broth.

“Go in,” Rebecca whispered, her eyes hot and dry behind her goggles. Please, she prayed, conscious of the crucifix’s weight at her neck. Another reflex rippled the gel, as if the nerve matrix suddenly sensed the truth: It grew inside an old Gates Foundation lab trailer on the cheapest hook-up in Little Nairobi, rather than in the hide of an adult cheetah.

But the droplet disappeared slowly, the cells sinking into the gelatinous stew of serum and growth factors that—God willing—would ripen them into a furred skin.

“It’s ready for the fresh growth medium and antibacterials, Ming!” Rebecca called out. She palmed the vat’s control pad; the motor vibrated against her legs as she carefully lowered the cheetah’s contours beneath the broth. The pink fluid bubbled as it swallowed their unceasing work of the past months. Past years. Past one-point-three decades, actually, since the Tuesday when her mother’s partner had brought home an empty Kenya Wildlife Service uniform and a tiny, worn crucifix. The blood had been washed off its bone surface, but no one could repair the chip left by the poacher’s bullet.

Author : Megan Chaudhuri Narrator : Laurice White Host : Caron J. Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Artist : Ashley Mackenzie Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 568: Artemis Rising – Dr. Mbalu and the Butcher’s Daughter is an Escape Pod original. Artemis Rising returns to Escape Pod for its third year! This month-long event highlights […]

Author : Eileen Gunnell Lee Narrator : Marguerite Croft Host : S.B. Divya Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Artist : Ashley Mackenzie Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 567: Baro Porrajmos, or Love in the Vardo (Artemis Rising) is an Escape Pod original. Artemis Rising returns to Escape Pod for its third year! This month-long event […]

Author : Eileen Gunnell Lee Narrator : Marguerite Croft Host : Divya Breed Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Artist : Ashley Mackenzie Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 567: Artemis Rising – Baro Porrajmos, or Love in the Vardo is an Escape Pod original. Artemis Rising returns to Escape Pod for its third year! This month-long […]

Honey and Bone

by Mads Alvey

With each step she took, the girl’s leg hissed. Thump, hiss, thump, hiss, thump, hiss. Whenever she lifted her leg, the knee joint extended. Her thigh and shin pulled apart unsettlingly, reminiscent of something deeply broken. Her gait was slow, round, loping. She didn’t move with any expedience. It was a speed without rush, or any desire for such.

Her footfalls themselves were soft, a quiet–thup, thup, thup. Soft leather covered her feet as she padded along, her hissing knee the loudest sound there. Once, it had creaked, a creak reminiscent of breaking metal–or perhaps, nearly as much, a rusty hinge. Before that... she didn’t remember.

The girl plodded slowly through a field of tall grass. The dry grass was up to her waist, rustling with each step. Rustle; rustle, hiss; rustle; rustle, hiss. It was late summer and the sun was high and hot. Her pack was heavy with honey from the field of hives outside the village. It was raw honey that she had scraped into dark jars, small glass jars could be found, at least one, in each home in her village. Several bees still lingered, buzzing around her as she walked, following her home.

Author : Madeline Alvey Narrator : Tina Connolly Host : Alex Acks Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Artist : Ashley Mackenzie Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 566: Artemis Rising – Honey and Bone is an Escape Pod original. Artemis Rising returns to Escape Pod for its third year! This month-long event highlights science fiction by […]

The Zombee Project 3.0

by Allison Mulder

Jensen brought the job offer to each of them in person, like no one did anymore. She poached them from the best labs and the best apiaries, all over the world. Put everything she knew on the table, in out-of-the-way cafés and fine-but-nothing-fancy hotel rooms and home kitchens which smelled strongly of coffee and not much else.

She handpicked them. She made that very clear. Like she was assembling heroes, forming a unit—a rescue unit, with a crucial task.

At that point, it wasn’t recruitment. It was a higher calling.

“It’s not legal,” Jensen told each of them. “But no one who could enforce that knows about it.”

None of them cared. They signed Jensen’s contracts and confidentiality agreements.

And from then on they were all members of Jensen’s team.

Nothing less and nothing more.

Author : Allison Mulder Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Divya Breed Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Artist : Ashley Mackenzie Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 565: Artemis Rising – The Zombee Project 3.0 is an Escape Pod original. Artemis Rising returns to Escape Pod for its third year! This month-long event highlights science fiction […]

Trusted Messenger

by Kevin Wabaunsee

Dr. Thaddeus Begay had been expecting a dying child in the exam room, but no one had said anything about a woman half-dead from starvation. He stepped inside and muscled the door shut—like the rest of the clinic, it was made from metal reclaimed from the original dropship, and like everything else in the colony, it didn’t quite fit right.

“Good morning,” Thad said.

“Hello there,” the woman said. Her tone was probably meant to be cheerful, but to Thad, it sounded like it took significant effort.

Thad frowned. His nurse must have made a mistake. A woman had burst into the clinic without an appointment, the nurse had said, demanding help for her sick child.

But the woman sitting on the examination table with her child was thin to the point of starvation. Cheeks deeply sunken; the outline of her ribs and collarbone sharp through her tank top. Her hair, like her shirt, was thin and plastered against her flesh with sweat. On her lap sat a little boy of about a year and a half, had jet-black hair and deep brown eyes, and cheeks that were flushed with a painful crimson rash. Still, he looked healthier than his mother.

Thad dragged a stool over to her. It squealed across the faint outlines of the struts and tie-downs and internal dividing walls that had once honeycombed the massive storage container that now served as the colony’s clinic.

He glanced back at the chart—her name was Suzanne Buenaventura. He glanced at her vitals, and nearly gagged when he saw her records from the colony ship. She’d been more than 215 pounds when the dropships had landed. Sitting on the exam table, she didn’t look like she’d top 110. “And what seems to be the problem this morning, Mrs. Buenaventura?”