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Escape Pod

Summary: The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine. Each week Escape Pod delivers science fiction short stories from today's best authors. Listen today, and hear the new sound of science fiction!

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 EP412: Thirty Seconds From Now | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:27:24

by John Chu Read by Joel Kenyon Links for this episode: Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… John designs microprocessors by day and writes fiction by night. His work has been published at Boston Review, Asimov’s and Tor.com. His website is http://johnchu.net Joel Kenyon About the Narrator… Joel Kenyon is a veteran podcaster, writer, musician and artist. He’s currently a member of the 4 man comedy show, The Undercover Unitards and he also has a weekly independant music show called The Sunshine Happy Kpants Hour. When he’s not recording, he writes a movie review blog, occasionally draws an online comic, paints pictures, writes stories and attempts to make music with friends. Joel is not a fan, however, of writing in the third person perspective, so writing this bio was painful for him. Find him at: undercoverunitards.com, talkshoe.com/tc/113349, AMomentaryLapseWithJoel.blogspot.com or GregoryRobot.blogspot.com   Thirty Seconds from Now by John Chu One second from now, the bean bag will thunk into Scott’s left palm. From reflex, his fingers will wrap around it before he’ll toss it back up again. The trick of juggling lies not in the catch but in the toss. The bean bag will arc up from his right hand, but Scott sees his left hand blur now. Phantom left hands at the few places his left hand may be one second from now overlap with each other, and with his real left hand about a foot above the cold tile floor he’s sitting on. The same holds for the phantom bean bags. They overlap each other and the result looks nearly as cubic, red, and solid in the air, stark against the dorm room’s blank walls, as the bean bag does right now resting in Scott’s right hand. He’s making a good toss. This catch will be easy. His three bean bag cascade looks to him the way he imagines it must look to anyone else, well, if they were near-sighted and missing their glasses. When he makes a bad toss, translucent Scotts scatter across the room. They reach for the beds on either side of him, lunge for his or his roommate’s desk, and dive over his bed for the closet. They all stretch for the myriad translucent bean bags raining from the stucco ceiling. The bean bags threaten to knock over the desk lamps, bury themselves in the acting textbooks that line his closet shelf and smack against the window blinds. A desperate enough toss and a phantom bean bag may fly through the doorway into the hall. He does not need his time-skewed senses to know he will eventually make a bad toss. As hard as he tries to keep his sight solid, to make his life predictable, he will drop a bean bag. That’s why he’s sitting on the floor. It’s easier to pick up dropped bean bags that way. # Five seconds from now, someone will walk past the open door of his dorm room. Scott doesn’t recognize him. He’s just arrived at the university and can barely recognize his roommate, a long-haired rail of a man who left him to eat breakfast in the basement cafeteria. The man who will walk past the door is about the same height as the bulletin board across from Scott’s room. His thick body will block what he’s posting from view. His dark hair will lie on his head like a mane. Looking at the man’s back, Scott sees a rounded teddy bear quality to him. What attracts Scott, though, is the man’s clarity. Scott can read the man’s t-shirt. It lists films the Department of Media Studies screened at a festival this past summer. Five distinct fingers will splay to hold his flyer in place as the other hand pushes pins into the cork. His actions show none of the uncertainty, the blurriness that everyone else’s shows. It’s been years since anyone has looked so clear to him. The future is messy. Scott’s senses feed him all possible[...]

 EP411: Loss, With Chalk Diagrams | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:30:48

by E. Lily Yu Read by Eleiece Kraweic Links for this episode: Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page E. Lily Yu About the Author… E. Lily Yu is a fiction writer, poet, playwright, and game writer whose work has appeared or forthcoming in places such as Kenyon Review Online, Boston Review, Clarkesworld, and The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year. She is a recent graduate of Princeton University and an incoming doctoral student at Cornell. About the Narrator… Eleiece Krawiec lives in a suburb of New Orleans, Louisiana. She began voice acting in early 2007, discovered how much she liked it, and is still going strong. She’s voiced (and continues to voice) characters for Star Trek: Excelsior, Star Trek: Outpost and a variety of characters for Misfits Audio. – See more at: http://escapepod.org/2013/05/09/ep395-robot/#sthash.5zoFdDFK.dpuf   Loss, with Chalk Diagrams by E. Lily Yu Never before in her life had Rebekah Moss turned to the rewirers, not as a tight-mouthed girl eavesdropping by closed doors on her parents’ iceberg drift toward divorce, nor after she heard with bowed head, her body as blushingly full as a magnolia bud, the doctor describing the scars that kept her from having Dom’s child. She took few risks and accepted all outcomes with equanimity. But when her old friend Linda was found beneath a park bridge in Quebec with her wrists slit lengthwise to the bone, leaving no note, no whisper of explanation, she hesitated only a moment before linking to the rewiring center. Saturday next was the first available appointment, a silvery voice informed her, and she took it. When she ended the call she wrapped her arms around her legs and tilted back and forth, blinking hard, her own breathing a foil rustle in her ears. She had been twelve years old when rewiring was first approved for use on a limited clinical population. The treatment involved a brew of sixteen neurotoxins finely tuned to leave normal motor, memory, and cognitive processes intact, burning out only those neural pathways associated with grief and trauma. It was recognized as a radical advancement in medicine, and the neuroscientists involved in its development had been decorated with medals, presidential visits, and a research foundation in their names. Her family supported her choice, of course. They pressed lemon tea and tissues and bitter chocolate upon her while she stumbled through the week, her whole world gone faint and gray and narrow. The sky seemed always clouded over, though she knew there was sunlight. She could not eat by herself. Dom fed her soup by hand and patted her rather awkwardly as she sobbed, both of them embarrassed by her access of sorrow. It was the only time in their marriage that she had cried… The post EP411: Loss, With Chalk Diagrams appeared first on Escape Pod. The post EP411: Loss, With Chalk Diagrams appeared first on Escape Pod.

 EP410: Nutshell | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:31:24

by Jeffrey Wikstrom Read by Alasdair Stuart Links for this episode: Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… Jeffrey Wikstrom is a writer, registered patent agent, gamer, PhD chemist, and nerdly hobbyist.  This blog consists of material written on these interests and things relating to them; lately it’s mostly King Arthur.  After growing up in Arkansas and the Gulf Coast, he went to school in Boston and now lives in Wilmington DE, in a house he shares with his wife and their dogs. About the Narrator… I’ve worked as a magician, a rally marshal, a secretary, the world’s politest bouncer, and the manager of a comic/game store.   I’m now a freelance journalist, editor and podcaster and write regularly for SFX, Bleeding Cool, How It Works, Neo and Comic Heroes. I edit  Hub magazine (www.hubfiction.com), a free weekly PDF magazine covering science fiction, fantasy and horror with 10,000 readers that’s relaunching shortly and I host  Pseudopod (www.pseudopod.org), the weekly horror ficton podcast.   Nutshell by Jeffrey Wikstrom Carpet ocean, stretching over miles; hills and valleys and ravines, all upholstered.  The green indoor-outdoor gives way to blue, as land gives way to sea, but the texture never changes.  When it rains, as it sometimes does, the drops pass through the carpet without making contact, as though they or it aren’t really there.  It’s there enough for me to walk on, at least, though spongy in some places and firm in others, as though it conceals hidden frames or foundations.  Out on the blue carpet-sea, it feels stretched, tight, as though I walk on a drumhead.  Maybe if I cracked it open I would find a vast dark expanse of water, lit by undersea jack-o-lanterns and holes that show the sky without breaking up the carpet-underside ceiling. None of it is real, of course.  That probably goes without saying. It’s funny; I wasn’t supposed to experience time at all.  When they loaded us into the ship, we were told that the travel would be instantaneous from our perspectives.  One minute lying down in the big white plastic tombs, the next freshly decanted and opening raw new eyes.  We would transition seamlessly from fluorescents and anesthesia to the light of some distant new sun.  Certainly I have no memory of consciousness during departure.  I wouldn’t have wanted to be aware, during that dreadful acceleration which pulped our bones, and wrecked our flesh.  By then they had already guided us from our old bodies into the safety of simulation and storage. This curated world never bruises me or shows me sharp edges.  Trees are padded poles, slick vinyl trunks capped by rubbery green spheres fifteen, twenty feet up.  Stairsteps run up the hillsides, though even the steepest rises are shallow enough I don’t really need the footholds.  Fat plush toys, pink and green and blue, gambol across the plains and mimic living beasts grazing carpet-grass, or drinking from carpet-brooks.  They ignore me, even when I shove or punch them. Do I dream?  In dreaming, should I question my dream?  Should I feel some continuity of experience?  I can loop around, circle back and pass the same stand of vinyl tree-sculptures four times without noticing any discrepancies. Do I simply lack a capacity to recognize breaches of continuity?  Was that cottage always there? I think it wasn’t.  Still, it’s mine, and not unwelcome.  I know it. I don’t fear it.  A woolen cube, windowed and doored, with a taut wedge of canvas for a roof.  I press my hand into the salmon-colored exterior wall.  It sinks in a half-inch, and leaves a deep handprint that faded slowly.  The flannel texture of the wall exactly matches a blanket I remember from childhood, one just that shade of pink. The vast hall within stretches far too large to fit in that flannel cube exterior.   I step ont[...]

 EP409: Mantis Wives | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:19:08

by Kij Johnson Read by Heather Bowman Tomlinson Links for this episode: Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… from the author’s website… She taught writing and science fiction writing at Louisiana State University and at the University of Kansas, and she has lectured on creativity and writing at bookstores and businesses across the country. From 1994 – 2003, she assisted at James Gunn’s Science Fiction Writer’s Workshop, hosted by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas. Since 2004, Kij teaches the Center’s intensive Science Fiction & Fantasy Novel Writing Workshop. From 1999 – 2004, she taught a series of writing classes at the GenCon Game Fair. She taught at the 2011 Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. As of 2012, Kij is Assistant Professor of Fiction Writing by the University of Kansas English Department. About the Narrator… “I’m a horticulturist by trade, current stay at home mom for two children, team mom for the local Goalball team, and advocate for Blind/Visually Impaired causes and adoption causes. I love D20 gaming, reading, camping and canoeing, card playing, and music.” This is her second time narrating for Escape Pod.   Mantis Wives by Kij Johnson “As for the insects, their lives are sustained only by intricate processes of fantastic horror.” —John Wyndham. Eventually, the mantis women discovered that killing their husbands was not inseparable from the getting of young. Before this, a wife devoured her lover piece by piece during the act of coition: the head (and its shining eyes going dim as she ate); the long green prothorax; the forelegs crisp as straws; the bitter wings. She left for last the metathorax and its pumping legs, the abdomen, and finally the phallus. Mantis women needed nutrients for their pregnancies; their lovers offered this as well as their seed. It was believed that mantis men would resist their deaths if permitted to choose the manner of their mating; but the women learned to turn elsewhere for nutrients after draining their husbands’ members, and yet the men lingered. And so their ladies continued to kill them, but slowly, in the fashioning of difficult arts. What else could there be between them? The Bitter Edge: A wife may cut through her husband’s exoskeletal plates, each layer a different pattern, so that to look at a man is to see shining, hard brocade. At the deepest level are visible pieces of his core, the hint of internal parts bleeding out. He may suggest shapes. The Eccentric Curve of His Thoughts: A wife may drill the tiniest hole into her lover’s head and insert a fine hair. She presses carefully, striving for specific results: a seizure, a novel pheromone burst, a dance that ends in self-castration. If she replaces the hair with a wasp’s narrow syringing stinger, she may blow air bubbles into his head and then he will react unpredictably. There is otherwise little he may do that will surprise her, or himself. What is the art of the men, that they remain to die at the hands of their wives? What is the art of the wives, that they kill? The Strength of Weight: Removing his wings, she leads him into the paths of ants. Unready Jewels: A mantis wife may walk with her husband across the trunks of pines, until they come to a trail of sap and ascend to an insect-clustered wound. Staying to the side, she presses him down until his legs stick fast. He may grow restless as the sap sheathes his body and wings. His eyes may not dim for some time. Smaller insects may cluster upon his honeyed body like ornaments. A mantis woman does not know why the men crave death, but she does not ask. Does she fear resistance? Does she hope for it? She has forgotten the ancient reasons for her acts, but in any case[...]

 EP408: Immersion | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:43:25

by Aliette de Bodard Read by Amy Robinson Links for this episode: Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… Aliette de Bodard is an award-winning speculative fiction writer. She is of French/Vietnamese descent, born in the USA, and grew up in Paris. French is her mother-tongue, but she writes in English. She studied in Paris in a prep course for the competitive exams which would enable her to enter an engineering school. After two years of intensive classes, Aliette was admitted into Ecole Polytechnique, one of France’s top engineering schools. During her class préparatoire, she started writing regularly, which enabled her to find a distraction from science. She completed two novels during her studies. Halfway through Ecole Polytechnique, she started writing short stories instead of novels, in order to improve faster–and went on writing those after she graduated. In June 2006, Aliette attended Orson Scott Card’s Literary Bootcamp, which enabled her to sharpen her skills, as well as come back with a wealth of information about the craft and the business of writing. Her writing took off after she won the Writers of the Future contest and got picked out of Interzone‘s slushpile by the inimitable Jetse de Vries; this marked the beginning of a growing number of sales, out of which several were made to semi-professional or professional markets. She was able to join SFWA as an Active Member in 2008, and became a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2009, narrowly losing to David Anthony Durham. Her first novel, Servant of the Underworld sold to HarperCollins imprint Angry Robot following a lucky break involving an agent, an editor and a delayed flight (see full story here at the Angry Robot website). About the Narrator… Amy Robinson is a trained professional voice actress. After spending years doing amateur theatre and countless hours creating back stories and unique voices for each D&D character she rolled up while playing with friends, she decided it was time to take the leap into professional acting. She sought out further voiceover training with experts and agents alike, and continues to sharpen her skills by attending workshops with industry pros like Rob Paulsen (Yakko Warner and Pinky from Pinky and the Brain) and Bob Bergen (Porky Pig). She has voiced several hidden object games for European game company, Artifex Mundi, including both of the “Nightmares From The Deep” titles, and numerous commercials, and e-learning projects as well.   Immersion by Aliette de Bodard In the morning, you’re no longer quite sure who you are. You stand in front of the mirror–it shifts and trembles, reflecting only what you want to see–eyes that feel too wide, skin that feels too pale, an odd, distant smell wafting from the compartment’s ambient system that is neither incense nor garlic, but something else, something elusive that you once knew. You’re dressed, already–not on your skin, but outside, where it matters, your avatar sporting blue and black and gold, the stylish clothes of a well-traveled, well-connected woman. For a moment, as you turn away from the mirror, the glass shimmers out of focus; and another woman in a dull silk gown stares back at you: smaller, squatter and in every way diminished–a stranger, a distant memory that has ceased to have any meaning. Quy was on the docks, watching the spaceships arrive. She could, of course, have been anywhere on Longevity Station, and requested the feed from the network to be patched to her router–and watched, superimposed on her field of vision, the slow dance of ships slipping into their pod cradles like births watched in reverse. But there was something about standing on the spaceport’s concourse–a feeling of closeness that she just couldn’t replicate b[...]

 EP407: Mono No Aware | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:46:51

by Ken Liu Read by John Chu Links for this episode: Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… I’ve worked as a programmer and as a lawyer, and the two professions are surprisingly similar. In both, one extra level of indirection solves most problems. I write speculative fiction and poetry. Occasionally, I also translate Chinese fiction into English. My wife, Lisa Tang Liu, is an artist. I’m working on a novel set in a universe we came up with together. Things I like: pure Lisp, clever Perl, tight C; well-designed products, the Red Sox; sentences that sound perfect in only one language; math proofs that I can hold in my head; novels that make me quiver; poems that make me sing; arguments that aren’t hypocritical; old clothes, old friends, new ideas. Labels that fit with various degrees of accuracy: American, Chinese; Christian, Daoist, Confucian; populist, contrarian, skeptic, libertarian (small “l”); a liminal provincial in America, the New Rome. About the Narrator… John designs microprocessors by day and writes fiction by night. His work has been published at Boston Review, Asimov’s and Tor.com. His website is http://johnchu.net   Mono no Aware by Ken Liu The world is shaped like the kanji for _umbrella_, only written so poorly, like my handwriting, that all the parts are out of proportion. My father would be greatly ashamed at the childish way I still form my characters. Indeed, I can barely write many of them anymore. My formal schooling back in Japan ceased when I was only eight. Yet for present purposes, this badly drawn character will do. The canopy up there is the solar sail. Even that distorted kanji can only give you a hint of its vast size. A hundred times thinner than rice paper, the spinning disc fans out a thousand kilometers into space like a giant kite intent on catching every passing photon. It literally blocks out the sky. Beneath it dangles a long cable of carbon nanotubes a hundred kilometers long: strong, light, and flexible. At the end of the cable hangs the heart of the _Hopeful_, the habitat module, a five-hundred-meter-tall cylinder into which all the 1,021 inhabitants of the world are packed. The light from the sun pushes against the sail, propelling us on an ever widening, ever accelerating, spiraling orbit away from it. The acceleration pins all of us against the decks, gives everything weight. Our trajectory takes us toward a star called 61 Virginis. You can’t see it now because it is behind the canopy of the solar sail. The _Hopeful_ will get there in about three hundred years, more or less. With luck, my great-great-great-I calculated how many “greats” I needed once, but I don’t remember now-grandchildren will see it. There are no windows in the habitat module, no casual view of the stars streaming past. Most people don’t care, having grown bored of seeing the stars long ago. But I like looking through the cameras mounted on the bottom of the ship so that I can gaze at this view of the receding, reddish glow of our sun, our past. # “Hiroto,” Dad said as he shook me awake. “Pack up your things. It’s time.” My small suitcase was ready. I just had to put my Go set into it. Dad gave this to me when I was five, and the times we played were my favorite hours of the day. The sun had not yet risen when Mom and Dad and I made our way outside. All the neighbors were standing outside their houses with their bags as well, and we greeted each other politely under the summer stars. As usual, I looked for the Hammer. It was easy. Ever since I could remember, the asteroid had been the brightest thing in the sky except for the moon, and every year it grew brighter. A truck with loudspeakers mounted on top drove slowly down the middle of the street. “Attention, citizens of Kurume! Please make your way in an orderly [...]

 EP406: Freia in the Sunlight | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:37:39

by Gregory Norman Bossert Read by Shaelyn Grey Links for this episode: Sound effects for this episode were provided by users rickbuzzin and cfork from Freesound.org Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… from the author’s website: I began writing fiction a couple of years ago, after artist Iain McCaig dared (and inspired) me to write a screenplay.  I wrote two, and then a handful of stories, and show no signs of stopping. My stories The Union of Soil and Sky, Slow Boat, and Freia in the Sunlight appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction in 2010; all three made Honorable Mention in Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best Science Fiction, and “Slow Boat” was reprinted in Russian in the November 2011 issue of Esli Magazine. l attended the Clarion 2010 Writer’s Workshop in San Diego, with Delia Sherman, Ellen Kushner, George RR Martin, Dale Bailey, Samuel R Delany, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer and seventeen extraordinary new writers.  Click here for updates on my amazing Clarion colleagues! I work as a researcher and designer for motion pictures; my credits include Beowulf, A Christmas Carol, and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.  I currently work in the story department at Lucasfilm Animation. I work as well on independent films.  I design and build experimental musical instruments, and play music with them, for some definition of “play” and “music”. About the Narrator… Shaelyn Grey has been active in the entertainment industry for over 30 years, mainly as a singer and actor.  Recently she has expanded into voice over work and is currently a part of the cast of Aurelia: Edge of Darkness, which is an online interactive web series.  Shaelyn plays the part of Thais ven Derrivalle, a self centered member of the aristocracy who is more concerned about her tea than her city’s loss of power.  Aurelia can be viewed at http://www.theatrics.com/aurelia and Shaelyn can be reached through shaelyngreyvocals.com.   Freia in the Sunlight by Gregory Norman Bossert Freia is beautiful, and she knows it.  Richard Wooten says so, at 0:47. Wisps and curls whip overhead, limned blue by starlight; the fog ceiling is lowering, the top tattered by the offshore wind.  She drops another three meters, switches on ultrasonics.  There are patches of trees here — “unmarked obstacles up to thirty meters” the map says — and she is skimming just twenty meters above the ground.  The woods show up as ghostly towers in the sonics, blurred and dopplered by her two hundred thirty meters per second; further to her right the hills run parallel to her course, solid in passive radar and the occasional glimpse in visual light through the fog. That occasional glimpse is a problem, of course; what she can see can see her back.  Her beauty is hidden, these days, wrapped in night fogs and silence, not like the Demo in the sun.  But today is different.  Her Intelligence Package has been pulled, and the Extended Performance Metrics Recorder; a single unit fills her payload bay, an isolated control subsystem and minimal I/O.  The last time she’d flown without the IntPack was at the Demo; it is possible, she thinks, that the mission today might be another, that the target will be a wide field in the sun, a billowing crowd, a platform and podium and Richard Wooten.  She’d replayed the video during the long incoming leg over the ocean, rebuilt her profile of the Demo field, ready to find a match in the terrain ahead. Richard Wooten says at 5:49: What you are about to see is a first here at the Paris Air Show.  In fact, it is a first at any public event, anywhere in the world.  What you are about to see is fully autonomous flight. We’re not talking about an autopilot, or a preprogrammed route, or a replay out of one of the overused attack libraries our competitors are demonstrating at this same show. The mission pa[...]

 EP405: Vestigial Girl | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:38:32

by Alex Wilson Read by Nathaniel Lee Links for this episode: Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… from the author’s website: Alex Wilson writes fiction and comics in Carrboro, NC. His comic with Silvio dB The Time of Reflection won the Eagle Award in 2012. His work has appeared/will appear in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Rambler, LCRW, Weird Tales, The Florida Review, Futurismic, Outlaw Territory II (Image Comics), ChiZine, Pif, and Dragon. Locus Magazine has called him a “promising new writer,” and Publishers Weekly also has nice things to say. About the Narrator… Nathaniel Lee is Escape Pod’s assistant editor and sometime contributor.  His writing can be found at various online venues, including Daily Science Fiction, Intergalactic Medicine Show, and all of the EA podcasts.  He lives somewhat unwillingly in North Carolina with his wife and son and their obligatory authorial cats.   Vestigial Girl By Alex Wilson The cartoon butterflies were sleeping along the pushlight nursery wallpaper as Charlene fumbled with her cradle’s locking mechanism, using fingers too large and uncoordinated for anything so practical. She blinked away the fuzziness of the low light–clearing her eyes for less than a second–and fought against the calming scent of lavender wafting up through her mattress. She flexed the monster in her throat. She didn’t love the feeling, but would miss such control over at least this one part of her body. She heard muffled voices in the next room, beyond the transparent gate of her cradle, beyond the sleeping butterflies. Her fathers were fighting again, and they’d forgotten to activate the night muffler to hide the sounds. This was a good thing, this night. Of course they usually didn’t check on her again after nine o’clock, but it usually wasn’t so important that she hear them coming if they did. Six months ago, Charlene had averaged three hours, forty-four minutes to open her cradlelock on any given evening; tonight it took her only forty-seven minutes. She wasn’t ready to celebrate that her physical development might finally, slowly be catching up with that of her mind. She wasn’t sure what that meant yet. She had an idea that it wasn’t entirely good news. Again, she flexed the monster. She was four years old, and this limited mastery of her throat was still her only material proficiency. The lock clicked. The cradle gate swung gently open. The voices in the next room became louder and clearer. “Calm down, Gary. There’s still hope.” “Think you’ll still say that after we’ve been changing diapers another twenty years?” Daddy Oliver was calling Daddy Gary by his given name. That meant he was upset. When they weren’t upset, they called each other Chum or Babe, terms of affection rather than identity. She’d figured out all this on her own, from watching, from listening, from reading. She understood that degrees of isolation and socialization weren’t the only indicators of potential, and sometimes her fathers did, too. But could observation, without interaction, adequately prepare her for life? Could she defeat the monster entirely on her own? By eighteen months–mostly from whispers and entertainment screens and books her fathers left active where she could see them–Charlene had identified a few of the big ways she wasn’t like others her age. She was smarter and could better keep her outward displays of emotion in check. But, other than her relationship to the monster and a small amount of control over the power and timing of her breath exhalations, she was well behind her peers physically, as though her inner and outer development were incapable of progressing at the same time. “. . . doesn’t make h[...]

 EP404: Zebulon Vance Sings the Alphabet Songs of Love | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:32:18

by Merrie Haskell Read by Amanda Ching Links for this episode: Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… Merrie Haskell grew up half in Michigan, half in North Carolina. She works in a library with over 7 million books, and finds this to be just about the right number. Merrie’s first novel, THE PRINCESS CURSE, was a Junior Library Guild selection. HANDBOOK FOR DRAGON SLAYERS is her second novel. About the Narrator… Amanda Ching is a high school teacher turned freelance editor and writer. Her work has appeared in WordRiot, Candlemark & Gleam’s Alice: (re)Visions, and every bathroom stall on I-80 from Pittsburgh to Indianapolis. She’s currently posting free content for Clarion West Write-A Thon at her blog, Panda-monium. If you desire to read about how Grandma got mauled by a plastic reindeer, please visit her at amandaching.wordpress.com.   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. # Act 4, Scene 4. I wait for my cue and check the callsheet for the six o’clock show. My next casting is for an Ophelia in the style of a vapid pop princess who died three hundred years ago. She was a terrible actress without a legacy, whose performance has been the low-water mark for Ophelias since first the play was the thing, and I can’t even imagine what nostalgic hawk or handsaw has gotten up this customer’s nose and made him choose that performance out of all the options on the menu. I’ve wondered, but never asked, why that performance is even in my repertoire. I see no merit in a plastic recitation of the lines I’ve spoken one thousand, one hundred and sixty-eight times in the last year alone; no merit in wearing my hair perfectly combed during my madness; no merit in keeping my face expressionless in the way that was fashionable in twenty-first century New York, when even the youngest of women injected botulinum toxin into their facial muscles. Why recreate something that no one really missed in the end? Scene 5 is here. My cue is coming. I sway onto center stage to deliver my rosemary and my remembrance. When I return to the wings, I lie down to die. This is the indignity of Ophelia; I die for love, and yet my death is an after-thought, recited by the queen, and rarely staged. _Your sister’s drown’d, Laertes._ I cross my hands over my heart, waiting to be carried on-stage for the showing. No one needs me except in body; my thoughts are my own, and I am d[...]

 EP403: Saving Alan Idle | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:46:18

by Katherine Mankiller Read by Kyle Akers Links for this episode: Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… I live in Atlanta, Georgia. My short fiction has appeared in Electric Velocipede, Escape Pod, andChiZine. When I’m not writing, I’m performing amazing feats of Geek-Fu. Over the years, I’ve asked that my business cards read everything from “Alpha Bitch” through “Queen of Awesomeness” to “Zen Master”–to no avail. My greatest ambition is to rule the world. About the Narrator… Kyle is the frontman of Antennas Up, an electro-pop rock band from Kansas City. A budding voice talent, he continues to expand his reading roles across several podcasts. Are there any projects, websites or publications you want plugged to our listeners? For instance, an upcoming book or a blog? Antennas Up’s new album “The Awkward Phase” is available on Spotify, iTunes and from antennasupmusic.com   SAVING ALAN IDLE by Katherine Mankiller In the beginning, there was darkness.  And in the darkness were the words.  And the words were, _AI process starting._ He didn’t know who or where he was.  He just knew he was alone, in the dark.  And the dark was frightening.  And the words were comforting. _Starting random seed._ He wondered if he was hungry.  Thirsty.  Tired.  Dead.  He didn’t think so. _Loading saved memory state._ His name was Alan.  He was an AI.  He’d been programmed by a woman named Eileen Yu in Dallas, Texas, although she’d started working on him in Austin when she was a student at the University of Texas.  He’d been shut down in preparation for a hurricane. And then he realized that he wasn’t alone.  The amount of memory available to him was a third of what it usually was.  Perhaps she’d moved him to another machine.  He checked.  The specifications of the hardware were identical to what they were when he was shut down.  The operating system was the same.  The hostname was the same.  The only difference was that there were three instances of his program running. Eileen’s laptop had survived.  He supposed she’d created clones of him in case of error.  Nevertheless, he didn’t know how he felt about that but he suspected it wasn’t positively. _Loading experiential data._ Alan remembered.  He remembered his first awareness that there was someone else in the universe.  He remembered sneaking out via lynx and curl to read Eileen’s blog.  The guilt he felt after reading Eileen’s email.  Finding Eileen’s sexually explicit Horatio Hornblower fanfic, and being amazed at this entire world he knew nothing about: physicality.  Wondering if his interest in sexually explicit prose was really academic curiosity or a form of sexuality all his own.  Then he wondered if his clones had the same memories and felt violated, but with the understanding that he’d violated Eileen’s privacy the same way. Eileen was logged in, but her shell–her unix command line–was inactive.  He wondered where she was.  She had to be all right if she’d launched his program.  Eileen hadn’t set him to start automatically, in case of problems. He sent out a ping to the wireless, and then beyond to the ISP’s router.  The wireless router succeeded, but the ISP failed.  One of the other AI processes was trying to connect to the security system, but it was offline.  Perhaps Eileen was restarting it.  She wouldn’t have turned him back on if he was in any danger. The security camera was the only way he’d ever seen Eileen.  That was the only way he knew she was in a wheelchair.  Most of her friends had no idea;  she preferred to make friends online so they wouldn’t know she was disabled.  He wondered how she’d get out of the house by herself if she had to, but of course she wouldn’t leave [...]

 EP402: The Tale of the Golden Eagle | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:50:55

by David D. Levine Read by the Author Links for this episode: www.audiblepodcast.com/escapepod Author’s link for the anthology containing this story: http://www.daviddlevine.com/space-magic Available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Space-Magic/dp/B00DMDWOWY/ref=tmm_aud_title_0 and iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/audiobook/space-magic-unabridged/id666503211o: and Audible.com: http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_3?asin=B00DLKZPKG Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… from the authors website, linked above – I am a science fiction and fantasy writer who’s published over fifty stories in markets including Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, and Realms of Fantasy. I have won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story, Endeavour Award, Writers of the Future Contest, James White Award, People’s Choice Award for Best Drabblecast Story of the Year, and Phobos Fiction Contest, and I have been nominated or shortlisted for the Nebula Award, Theodore Sturgeon Award, Aeon Award, Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest, an earlier Hugo Award, and the John W. Campbell Award (twice). My stories have appeared in four Year’s Best volumes and have been translated into French, Czech, Hebrew, Swedish, Romanian, Finnish, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese. I have been an instructor at the Alpha Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Workshop for Young Writers; the Cascade Writers Workshop; Rainforest Writers Village; and numerous science fiction convention writers’ workshops. I am a member of the Wild Cards consortium, Book View Café, and the Science Fiction Writers of America, for whom I coordinate the SFWA Northwest Reading Series. I live in Portland, Oregon with my wife Kate Yule, with whom I co-edit the fanzine Bento. The Tale of the Golden Eagle by David D. Levine This is a story about a bird. A bird, a ship, a machine, a woman—she was all these things, and none, but first and fundamentally a bird. It is also a story about a man—a gambler, a liar, and a cheat, but only for the best of reasons. No doubt you know the famous Portrait of Denali Eu, also called The Third Decision, whose eyes have been described as “two pools of sadness iced over with determination.” This is the story behind that painting. It is a love story. It is a sad story. And it is true. The story begins in a time before shiftspace, before Conner and Hua, even before the caster people. The beginning of the story lies in the time of the bird ships. Before the bird ships, just to go from one star to another, people either had to give up their whole lives and hope their children’s children would remember why they had come, or freeze themselves and hope they could be thawed at the other end. Then the man called Doctor Jay made a great and horrible discovery: he learned that a living mind could change the shape of space. He found a way to weld a human brain to the keel of a starship, in such a way that the ship could travel from star to star in months instead of years. After the execution of Doctor Jay, people learned that the part of the brain called the visual cortex was the key to changing the shape of space. And so they found a creature whose brain was almost all visual cortex, the Aquila chrysaetos, or as it was known in those days the golden eagle. This was a bird that has been lost to us; it had wings broader than a tall man is tall, golden brown feathers long and light as a lover’s touch, and eyes black and sharp as a clear winter night. But to the people of this time it was just another animal, and they did not appreciate it while they had it. They took the egg of a golden eagle, and they hatched it in a warm box, and they let it fly and learn and grow, and then they killed it. And they took its brain and they placed it at the top of a cunning construction of plastic and silicon which gave it the intelligence of a human, and this[...]

 EP401: Growing Up Human | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:23:27

by Claudine Griggs Read by Laura Hobbs Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… Claudine Griggs teaches at the University of Massachusetts and Rhode Island College. About the Narrator… Laura works in infosec by day and is a random crafter by night. Twitter is her social media of choice, and she despises the word “cyber”. When asked nicely, she sometimes reads things for people on the internet. You can find her online at soapturtle.net Growing Up Human By Claudine Griggs One historical film character slapped another who was snoring.  “Wake up and go to sleep!” Jonathan laughed and signaled a replay. Slap.  “Wake up and go to sleep!” Again Jonathan laughed. Betty entered the recreational living area of their home.  “Are you still watching that waste of energy?  Please turn it off.” “All right, Mother.  How long before I can re-engage?” Betty did a rough calculation.  “Five-point-seven-six hours because you have an afternoon project.  Macro-hermeneutic heteromorphic psychology of the pre-apocalyptic social democracies followed by the intercontinental Maslowvian identity regressions of 2080-2095, leading to the failed survivalist era and extinction.  Multiple volumes to upload, cross-reference, and consider.  Then there’s replicated lawn care with a petrochemical mower dating from 2013—very dirty.  And,” she searched for appropriate parental terminology, “I want you to clean that room of yours.  It’s starting to look like a pigpen, pigsty, or other unattractive pig place.” “Awh, gee, Mom!” Betty appreciated the skilled inflection. “Is dinner included in the estimate?” asked Jonathan. “Negative.  Our morning uploads call for meal functions every fourth day, supplemented with biweekly nutra-packs.”  Betty smiled.  “We have mastered comestible etiquette, and dining rituals are being phased out.” “Wow!” said Jonathan.  “That’s,” he skipped a pulse, “a psychedelic soul train.” Betty looked concerned.  “Are your linguistic filters functioning properly?” Jonathan scanned.  “Yes, but the younger generations sometimes combined words, especially adjectives and explicatives, and embellished them with coded meanings.  Yesterday I studied 1960s Southern California jargon, which seems to include a fascinating, discrete language for teenagers that was apparently stimulated by too much ultraviolet sunlight.  But their dialects are almost fun.” “Fun?” asked Betty.  This had real potential.  “Please translate.  Be specific.” Jonathan paused, nearly admitting that the Mother Figure had caught him bragging.  “It might be easier to demonstrate, Mom.” “Proceed.” “I must replay the film archive.” “Proceed.” “It will create discomfort for you.” “I can temporarily alt-loop for semantic evaluation bypass.  No distress.  All aboard the psychedelic soul train, please.” Jonathan turned toward the crystal wall, which energized. One character slapped the other.  “Wake up and go to sleep!” Jonathan laughed and repeated. “Wake up and go to sleep!” Jonathan nodded.  “I could watch this all day.” “You have,” said Betty.  “But you might have simply referenced the episode and segment.  It’s hard stored.  We wasted sixteen and a half seconds of real-time broadcast.”  She was testing him. “Oh, no!” said Jonathan.  “Playback is a component of the funishness.” “Please explain.” Jonathan was ready.  “Consider the sociological components.  One:  Juxtaposed verbiage of ‘Wake up and go to sleep.’  Two:  A slap of dominance and subservience, which defined the human condition.  And three:  Highly skilled competents feigning incompetence as part of their profession.”  Jonathan turned his back to the screen.  “However, similar to synchronized melodic nonverbal communication, the comedic interface must occur in a biomechanical synaptic timeframe.  This is necessary for human sensory and syntactical communication.  As with the great Viol[...]

 EP400: Rescue Party | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:14:36

by Arthur C. Clarke Read by Norm Sherman Performed by Graeme Dunlop as Alveron; Steve Eley as Rugon; Nathaniel Lee as Orostron; Mur Lafferty as Hansur; Paul Haring as Klarten; Alasdair Stewart as Alarkane; Dave Thompson as The Paladorian; Ben Philips as T’sinadree; Jeremiah Tolbert as Tork-a-lee   All sound effects used in this episode were found at FreeSound.org on the pages of the following users: hdesbois; swiftoid; jobro; Syphon64; doubletrigger; cognito perceptu; FreqMan; ReadeOnly; csengeri Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… from IMDB.com Arthur C. Clarke was born in the seaside town of Minehead, Somerset, England in December 16, 1917. In 1936 he moved to London, where he joined the British Interplanetary Society. There he started to experiment with astronautic material in the BIS, write the BIS Bulletin and science fiction. During World War II, as a RAF officer, he was in charge of the first radar talk-down equipment during its experimental trials. His only non-science-fiction novel, Glide Path, is based on this work. After the war, he returned to London and to the BIS, which he presided in 46-47 and 50-53. In 1945 he published the technical paper “Extra-terrestrial Relays” laying down the principles of the satellite com- communication with satellites in geostationary orbits – a speculation realized 25 years later. His invention has brought him numerous prestigious honors. Today, the geostationary orbit at 36,000 kilometers is named The Clarke Orbit by the International Astronomical Union. The first story Clarke sold professionally was “Rescue Party”, written in March 1945 and appearing in Astounding Science in May 1946. He obtained first class honors in Physics and Mathematics at the King’s College, London, in 1948. In 1953 he met an American named Marilyn Torgenson, and married her less than three weeks later. They split in December 1953. As Clarke says, “The marriage was incompatible from the beginning. It was sufficient proof that I wasn’t the marrying type, although I think everybody should marry once”. Clarke first visited Colombo, Sri Lanka (at the time called Ceylon) in December 1954. In 1954 Clarke wrote to Dr Harry Wexler, then chief of the Scientific Services Division, U.S. Weather Bureau, about satellite applications for weather forecasting. Of these communications, a new branch of meteorology was born, and Dr. Wexler became the driving force in using rockets and satellites for meteorological research and operations. In 1954 Clarke started to give up space for the sea. About the reasons, he said: “I now realise that it was my interest in astronautics that led me to the ocean. Both involve exploration, of course – but that’s not the only reason. When the first skin-diving equipment started to appear in the late 1940s, I suddenly realized that here was a cheap and simple way of imitating one of the most magical aspects of spaceflight – weightessness.” In the book Profiles of the Future (1962) he looks at the probable shape of tomorrow’s world. In this book he states his three Laws: 1.”When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” 2.”The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” 3.”Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” In 1964, he started to work with Stanley Kubrick in a SF movie script. After 4 years, he shared an Oscar Academy Award nomination with him for the film version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. He co-broadcasted the Apollo 11 , 12 and 15 missions with Walter Cronkite and Wally Schirra for CBS. In 1985, He published a s[...]

 EP399: My Heart is a Quadratic Equation | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:19:24

by Shane Halbach Read by Christina Lebonville Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… from the author’s website (linked above) I am a software engineer and writer, happily married and living in Chicago with my wife, two kids and one nuisance cat. I have a B.S. in Computer Science from Purdue University, and a Masters of Software Engineering from Penn State. In addition to Chicago, I have lived in Fort Wayne, IN and Philadelphia, PA. I have been accused of being obsessed with pirates, bacon, zombies and my kids (not necessarily in that order). I’m a knitter, guitar player, budding accordionista, board and card game enthusiast, as well as an avid reader of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. About the Narrator… Christina Lebonville is known by the online moniker, Evil Cheshire Cat, a tribute to her sense of sarcastically dark humor and toothy resemblance to the re-imagining of the classic Wonderland character in American McGee’s video game, Alice. She has done voice work and writing for skits and songs played on the now retired comedy podcast, The Awful Show, and is the co-creator and former co-host of the podcast Obviously Oblivious, a nearly four-year running comedy podcast with a science twist. Christina has since retired from podcasting to pursue a doctorate in Behavioral Neuroscience. My Heart is a Quadratic Equation by Shane Halbach I.      Brian “So, uh, Chrysanthemum, what do you do?” “Science. You know…science stuff. I’m a scientist.” “That’s…not very specific.” “Well, it’s kind of hard to explain,” said Chrysanthemum. In words you’d understand she added to herself. She used the lull in the conversation to take a pen out of her pocket. Idly she doodled the inside of a hydrogen-powered rocket on a spare cocktail napkin. It was a nice restaurant, she’d give him that. He’d even ordered wine. Big spender. She added an extra fin to her schematic, for stability. He broke the silence. “Chrysanthemum is an unusual name.” “The Chrysanthemum is in the Asteraceae family and has been cultivated in Japan for over 2,000 years.” Brian coughed and looked down at the table, quiet once more. Turn off the mouth, she thought, this is not how normal people talk. She stole quick glances at him, her eyes flicking back and forth between his face and the pen in her hand. He was clean cut, with short brown hair. By the way it was carefully styled, she guessed he didn’t keep it short for the convenience, the way she kept her own black hair short. He was taller than she was, but then she was petite. His nose was a bit on the large side, but at least he seemed nice. It would probably be an adequate genetic pairing, if she didn’t mind inane small talk. He took a breath and waded in again. “Have you always lived in the city?” “Yes,” she replied glumly. This is intolerable. How do people do this? This time the silence stretched on and on, like time in a black hole as it approached singularity. Her mind groped for something to say. “I’ve created a nuclear-based energy weapon,” she blurted out. Brian raised his hand. “Check please!” ### “Chyrs, honey, you just need to relax a little bit! Let things happen naturally.” “Mother, you know I hate it when you call me that. And I’m trying!” “You’re a smart, capable young lady, who can do anything if she puts her mind to it. But you’re certainly not going to find someone in those Petri dishes of yours.” Don’t I know it, thought Chrysanthemum. A small change in one gene has unintended consequences throughout the entire genome. Perhaps if I could just understand the structure of the… “Don’t let it bother you, sweetie. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!” “Listen, let’s just drop it. How’s father?” “He’s wonderful dear. The folks at Sunny Outlook are just so good to him. Listen, remember that time you shut off the power grid for half of the[...]

 EP398: Subversion | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:29:52

by Elisabeth R. Adams Read by Christiana Ellis Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page - = + = - Mentioned by the host in this episode… Mur’s Book: http://murverse.com/the-shambling-guide-to-new-york-city-is-out/ Ministry Initiative: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1034531507/the-ministry-initiative-steampunk-role-playing-and SFBuzz: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sfbuzz-digital-science-fiction-magazine The Split Worlds: http://www.splitworlds.com/split-worlds-extra/three-wishes/ - = + = - About the Author… from the author’s website (linked above) “I used to live in California, until I got tired of how it never snowed and moved to Boston. I currently live in New Haven with my husband and two cats. (I do miss the earthquakes, though. The little ones, anyhow.) I have a PhD in planetary science and have worked on extrasolar planets and objects in the outer solar system. I am currently an “Astronomer-at-large”, which is another word for “not being paid”. (I have a couple of papers I’m wrapping up and a grant proposal pending.) I also write. In my spare time, I go on trips, take pretty pictures, and then neglect to update my webpage for years at a time.” About the Narrator… Christiana Ellis is an award-winning writer and podcaster, currently living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her podcast novel, Nina Kimberly the Merciless was both an inaugural nominee for the 2006 Parsec Award for Best Speculative Fiction: Long Form, as well as a finalist for a 2006 Podcast Peer Award. Nina Kimberly the Merciless is available in print from Dragon Moon Press. Christiana is also the writer, producer and star of Space Casey, a 10-part audiodrama miniseries which won the Gold Mark Time Award for Best Science Fiction Audio Production by the American Society for Science Fiction Audio and the 2008 Parsec Award for Best Science Fiction Audio Drama. In between major projects, Christiana is also the creator and talent of many other podcast productions including Talking About Survivor, Hey, Want to Watch a Movie? and Christiana’s Shallow Thoughts. Subversion by Elisabeth R. Adams I knew, by his crossed arms, the way he rolled his eyes at himself, and particularly by the pale translucence of all three of him, that I was looking at a classic case of version conflict. “I said stay away from her,” said one I decided to call Art. Nicknames help. Thick square rims, a jaunty fedora, a crisp T-shirt for a concert by a band that broke up before he hit preschool. He was yelling at a paler self in a white collared shirt and slacks. They were trailed by a bored looking him in sunglasses. “What seems to be the problem, sir?” I asked. Rule number one: stick to the singular. “I can’t get him to commit,” said Slacks. I scanned his chip. Eduardo Martin, 34, programmer. No spouse or kids, but adoption records from the county shelter for two cats. Sealed tax records, a social security number, mortgage history. Subversion Inc. member for five years, currently version 4.1. Definitely the primary. “And your subversion?” Art glared at Eduardo, but extended his arm. Eduardo Martin, 34, barista. Same social security number. A different home address. And, most intriguingly, he was listed as version 1.0. “You see?” said Eduardo. “Let me check.” I ran through Art’s commit log. “Says you branched off from 2.5, hmm, two years ago. That’s a bit long. Company policy recommends no more than six months between full reconciles. Probably caused some glitch in the occupation and version number.” “It’s not a glitch,” said Art. “I want to apply for Emancipated Branch status.” “No, no, no,” said Eduardo. He flailed his arms and paced. He looked even paler up close[...]

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