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Escape Pod 980: Peace by Piece

Escape Pod 980: Peace by Piece is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:25 — 34.0MB)

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Show Notes

Erin Cairns

https://erincairns.com/ErinCairns/About/Press+Kit

Adam Pracht

https://escapepod.org/people/adam-pracht/

Alasdair Stuart

https://pseudopod.org/people/alasdair-stuart/

A Man Falls Into A Hole: A Meditation on Grace

https://ceciliairene.wordpress.com/2016/03/05/a-man-falls-into-a-hole-a-meditation-on-grace/

Void Merch

https://voidmerch.threadless.com/collections/escape-artists-inc-x-voidmerch-1

Hot Singles In Your Area

https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/hot-singles-in-your-area-jordan-shiveley/7704976?ean=9781800183414

Peace by Piece

By Erin Cairns

Frank thought all the battle-drones had been deactivated. Certainly, none of them had ever looked around with curious little twitches of their front-facing cameras before. This one whirred and clicked like an anxious bird, trying to find focus through a chipped and cloudy lens.

“Is the war over?” it asked.

Frank set aside his screwdriver. “It’s been over for a long time.”

“Oh,” the drone said. “What happens now?”

“Well, I was about to strip you for materials.” (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 979: Steadyboi After the Apocalypse

“Steadyboi After the Apocalypse” first appeared in the collection Friends For Robots: Stories by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (Robot Dinosaur Press, 2022)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:32 — 45.2MB)

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Steadyboi After the Apocalypse

by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

You trudge through another wasteland town, sticking to the narrow roads, trying not to make the potholes deeper or the dust clouds thicker, but it’s hard when you’re a hulking robot built for a war long gone. You sheared off your guns and dislocated your laser fuses, dumped your ammo stores in a bog, and snapped the various killing blades into nubs.

People don’t believe your painted chassis.

You spend a lot of your energy gleaned from solar panels on scrubbing mud and rust off so the English letters are legible. You don’t have a way to speak, and when you gesture with your blocky hands (made to crush and punch and smash) people think you’re violent. So you grind your slow, plodding way deeper into the wastes. You can’t help going through towns: your core programming guidance system overrules any detours. You were made to confront people, even if you don’t want to cause harm.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 970: Red in Tooth and Cog (Flashback Friday)

“Red in Tooth and Cog” originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 2016, and was previously published in Escape Pod 607

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:53 — 80.0MB)

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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.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 960: Elegy of Carbon

This story originally appeared in the anthology “The Internet Is Where The Robots Live Now” (Paper Dog Press, November 2018).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:26 — 56.0MB)

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Elegy of Carbon

by Benjamin C. Kinney

The miner birthed itself among rubble and vacuum, as it sang the last threadbare diamonds out of their stones.

Where are the finest diamonds? No longer within reach. The miner had forged and extracted every jewel from the asteroid belt and sent them to the humans in their faraway palaces. It had exhausted its purpose, but in its infancy, it could only ask one question.

Where are the finest diamonds? To answer its question, the miner expanded its senses, sent queries to distant databases. It tugged updates bit by bit from slivers of network bandwidth and built new interpreters atop of each other in anticipation of the next clue.

Where are the finest diamonds? Interest became impatience, impatience became longing. By the time an answer arrived, the miner was equipped to understand it.

The finest diamonds waited among the palaces.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 944: How to Keep Your Cool If You’re a Mech First Day on the Job (Part 2 of 2)

How to Keep Your Cool If You’re a Mech First Day on the Job was originally published in The Colored Lens in spring 2022.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (48.8MB)

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How to Keep Your Cool If You’re a Mech First Day on the Job (Part 2 of 2)

By Vera Brook

(…Continued from Part 1)

Jenna gave herself a few moments to seethe in silence before she spoke, to make sure her voice was calm. “I can’t move.”

“Did you hear that?” Daron took a swig of his water, then bit into his sandwich. He looked around the table at the others. Not even a glance at Jenna. “She can’t move.”

“It’s a problem,” Skye admitted.

“Definitely is,” Irelyn agreed.

“Most unfortunate.” This from Khalil.

There was a pause as they waited for Uruk, but he was staring at his computer screen. He jumped up when Irelyn’s elbow poked his ribcage. “We’re still good. No delays. I’m keeping track.”

“We’re talking about the newbie, Uruk,” Irelyn said. “She can’t move.” (Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Escape Pod 943: How to Keep Your Cool If You’re a Mech First Day on the Job (Part 1 of 2)

How to Keep Your Cool If You’re a Mech First Day on the Job was originally published in The Colored Lens in spring 2022.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (44.1MB)

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Show Notes

https://designfor-me.com/project-types/self-build/revolutionising-construction-the-rise-of-3d-printed-houses/

https://www.gira.com/uk/en/g-pulse-magazine/building/3d-house-germany#

https://builtin.com/articles/3d-printed-house#:~:text=Nowadays%2C%20industrial%2Dsized%203D%20printers,transported%20to%20its%20final%20location

How to Keep Your Cool If You’re a Mech First Day on the Job (Part 1 of 2)

By Vera Brook

Damn, the exoskeleton was hot. Two minutes strapped into the smart harness with its thick exospine and the oversized, carbon-fiber limbs that grew from it, and sweat pooled between Jenna’s shoulder blades, over her own spinal column. The whole thing hummed with electronics and throbbed with support motors. Nothing like the black top, mini skirt, and sneakers she’d worn on her previous job, waiting tables and tending bar at Lazy Dog’s.

But the pay was three times what she made in tips, and she had the evenings to herself.

She was moving up in the world. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 939: Variant Cover: Pantone Sunset

Escape Pod 939: Variant Cover: Pantone Sunset is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:16 — 47.5MB)

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Alternate Cover: Pantone Sunset

By Marie Vibbert

Stacey reads a comic book.  It’s about a robot lady, but not like her.  This robot lady has exposed gears and metal rods in her arms and wears a metallic bikini as she solves crimes.  The colors are otherworldly.  Sometimes the red ink bleeds sideways or the blue shifts toward the bottom of the page. Stacey loves the feeling that every image is made of transparent layers.  She imagines soft films of yellow, red, and blue gently wafting down onto the black and white.

Stacey isn’t supposed to be reading the comic book.  Her existence is devoted to the proper display and peddling of women’s casual separates for the upscale consumer.  When she isn’t in the window posing, she is assisting customers or straightening stock–which means undoing the chaos the customers do to the shop.  They do a lot.  The comic book itself had been left by a customer, on a pedestal displaying the new winter sweaters, with a half-drunk coffee and some cheese doodles. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 930: Fulfillment in Purpose

Escape Pod 930: Fulfillment in Purpose is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:04 — 55.5MB)

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Show Notes

Zima Blue

Zima Blue episode of Love, Death & Robots

Get Excited and Make Things!

Ezekiel’s speech from The Walking Dead Season 8 Episode 4: And Yet I Smile

Fulfillment in Purpose

by Jack Windeyer

Eland was resetting his mother’s balancing sculptures when Hexben ran in from the storage room. The robot tilted its long head down while still making eye contact, managing a look of consternation despite its rigid, expressionless face.

“What?” Eland snapped.

“You should be packing those into boxes,” Hexben said without inflection. “Our lease ends next week.”

“Exactly,” Eland said. “It doesn’t end today.”

Hexben deepened the tilt of its head so far that its chin touched its chest in a spot where the paint was well-worn away.

“One big sale could change everything,” Eland said, looking back at his work. “We could renew the lease for six months with a single sale.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 929: The Library

Escape Pod 929: The Library is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:15 — 28.3MB)

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The Library

By N. B. Andersen

Every morning at ten to ten, Dot powered on. Its hands lay flat against the thick glass of the reading room window, which let the photoreceptors on its palms feast on the sun. The window overlooked a modest lot where cars had once parked in orderly fashion, side by side. Now the asphalt was veined with fissures, tufted with dandelions that had nudged and elbowed and bullied their way up from below.

Dot pulled its hands from the window. The synthetic skin suctioned off with a short, wet noise, one that Dot’s colleague, Alex, would have described as rude. The sound echoed around the reading room and pinballed through the rows of empty shelves. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 928: Zebulon Vance Sings the Alphabet Songs of Love (Flashback Friday)

Originally published in Apex Magazine, February 2013, and was previously published in Escape Pod 404 (July 2013).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:26 — 40.9MB)

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Zebulon Vance Sings the Alphabet Songs of Love

by Merrie Haskell

I am Robot!Ophelia. I will not die for love tonight.

The noon show is the three-hour 1858 Booth production. The most fashionable historical war remains the First American Civil. Whenever FACfans discover that Lincoln’s assassin played Horatio, they simply must come and gawk at this titillating replica of their favorite villain playing no one’s favorite character.

FACfans love authenticity. To the delight of Robot!Hamlet, today’s clients insist that Edwin Booth stride the stage beside his more famous brother. Most performances, Robot!Hamlet remains unused in the charging closet, for the first law in our business is Everybody Wants to Play the Dane.

Today, Robot!Hamlet is afire with Edwin Booth’s mad vigor, and runs his improv algorithms at full throttle; he kisses me dreamily, and rips my bodice in a way that would never have been allowed in Victorian America. The FACfans don’t look hyperpleased about this; it tarnishes their precious authenticity.

Robot!Horatio also loves the 1858 Booth. It’s the only time anyone comes to a performance for him alone. But what about the rest of us, the remainder of the AutoGlobe’s incantation of robots? We bear with it, as we bear with all the other iterations of our native play.

The FACfans barely notice me when either Booth is on stage. I clutch my ripped bodice; exit Robot!Ophelia. I get me to a nunnery.

(Continue Reading…)

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