Posts Tagged ‘technology’

Genres: , , , ,

Escape Pod 1067: Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being (Part 2 of 2)

Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being originally appeared in Clarkesworld 218 (November 2024). 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:10 — 58.4MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being (Part 2)

By A. W. Prihandita

(…Continued from Part 1)

Semau made her way to the pier feeling bloated and hollow all at once.

She carried a duffel bag of medical instruments she’d stolen from the office: a stethoscope to record breaths and heartbeats, a set of syringes to take various kinds of fluid samples. These were instruments she normally used to collect data for the INT-Health model to analyze. That night, she’d put them offline, hoping against hope that a few hours of disconnection wouldn’t be enough to alarm the Medical Board.

And just in case, she’d reviewed the protocol for malpractice suspicion. The Board would have to send an overseer to lead her investigation. The nearest headquarter of the Medical Board was a system over, which meant the overseer would take a week to arrive, if Semau was ever suspected of anything. Which hopefully she never would be. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: , , , ,

Escape Pod 1066: Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being (Part 1 of 2)

Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being originally appeared in Clarkesworld 218 (November 2024). 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:17 — 48.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being (Part 1 of 2)

By A. W. Prihandita

“Doc, there’s a . . . hole growing in me,” the alien said through the spherical interpreting machine hovering over them.

Semau barely registered the word “hole,” so taken was she by the sight of the alien. If she were just a tad less caring about propriety, she would’ve let her eyes blow wide open. The alien looked impossibly transparent yet not transparent at the same time, like a mound of water. Their shape was almost humanoid: a roundish head sitting atop a misshapen lump of torso. They were visible in the way ocean waves were visible, only through folds that magnified its translucence to almost-opaqueness.

Semau glanced again at the patient form. Name: Txyzna (he/him). Species: Plyzmorynox-matori. Semau had never heard of the plyzmorynox before, and a quick lookup in the Brazs’s Database of Interstellar Species told her this wasn’t her fault. The plyzmorynox had an occurrence rate of 0.000013% of interspecies encounters, which made her impulsively count the decimal places—she’d never seen anything that small. She wanted to look up the Matori system as well—what kind of place was home to this super rare species?—but this wasn’t the time to satisfy idle curiosity. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: , ,

Escape Pod 1051: You Have Arrived at Your Destination

Escape Pod 1051: You Have Arrived at Your Destination is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:46 — 70.2MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

You Have Arrived at Your Destination

By Jo Miles

It starts with an accident.

A dreary day, the road slick with rain. Emily’s letting the car’s auto-drive do the work because she’s brain-fried and exhausted, eyes glazed over from the weekday grind. In her head—and okay, muttering aloud—she’s continuing today’s argument with Calvin, the project manager, about timelines and corner-cutting and how they’re possibly going to get this update done on schedule, when the old woman walking a cat—walking a cat?—steps into the street without looking.

The car reacts faster than Emily’s distracted human reflexes; a millisecond’s analysis of the situation and its programming determines how to minimize harm, swerving to hit a telephone pole instead of the person. As the car whips around, in the prolonged instant before the crunch, the old woman stares at Emily. Long nose in a shriveled face. Cloudy grey eyes that, despite being shadowed by the raincoat’s hood, stab straight through Emily, seeing too much.

The afterimages of those eyes dance in Emily’s vision as she punches back the airbag.

“Shit! Oh, damn it.”

Heart pounding, adrenaline sour in her throat, Emily is more awake than she’s been in months. She stumbles out on shaking legs, apologies spilling out of her. “Hey, holy crap, I’m so sorry, are you okay?”

But the old woman is gone. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: , , ,

Escape Pod 1049: Amrit

Amrit originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2023.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:59 — 80.1MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Kiran Kaur Saini

https://kirankaursaini.com/

Kaushik Narasimhan

https://www.castofwonders.org/people/kaushik-narasimhan/

Alasdair Stuart

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

Robot and Frank

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_%26_Frank

Void Merch

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

Amrit

By Kiran Kaur Saini

The doorbell rang as Fox Singh lay staring into the plumbing under the kitchen sink. “Go away!” He wasn’t expecting anybody, and if any of his neighbors ever rang, it was only to complain about the volume of his television. The joints on the p-trap looked like Fox’s knees felt—crusted over with white flake but somehow still leaking fluids all over the cabinet.

“Mr. Singh,” a voice called. “This is Amrit, your Senior Well-Being Unit.”

What? This couldn’t be. Did they honestly think he was that old and incapable? Fox hauled himself up and hobbled to the peephole. The Unit wore a hot-pink turban with leopard spots. Seriously? His beard was tucked tidily under his chin, though, much neater than Fox’s, and his glaring turban was also more streamlined: impressively crisp, each overlap at precisely the right position. In recent years Fox had resigned himself to a delivery service, and though the scanner had read the shape and measurements of his head, the turbans never fit as they would if he tied them himself. The Unit smiled and waved. He really did look almost human. Fox licked his fingers, twirled the ends of his mustache together, smoothed his beard, and opened the door. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: , ,

Escape Pod 1042: More Tomorrow (Flashback Friday)

“More Tomorrow” was first published in Automata Review, March 2018, and previously published as Escape Pod 713, in January 2020.

A few grade-A curses.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:07 — 50.1MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

More Tomorrow

By Premee Mohamed

DAY 5

Anyway, it turns out trilobites aren’t very good eating even if you haven’t eaten in days. I had particularly high hopes for the fat, humped asaphids, thinking they would taste like shrimp, but everything I’ve caught so far is strictly armor and attitude, plus they bite. Discovered this morning that if you just hoik a trilobite in the fire and assume terminal temperature, it crawls out and shakes itself off like a little tank. Complete decapitation required. PAPER IDEA: Mechanisms of apparent trilobite invincibility. They’re not strictly aquatic, either, they come right up on land and look at you while you’re eating their friends. Jesus.

Also cut my fingers to shit butchering the first one; to be honest, it was hard to tell who was butchering who. (Whom?) Easier going now since I chipped an axe out of a piece of blue flint that I found a ways up the beach. Poor replacement for the one we lost, but it cracks the armor at least, and then you can roast them without explosions and shrapnel. Still have to cut them up to get the few calories worth of meat inside though (which doesn’t, incidentally, taste like shrimp). They’re survival food. A couple more days and I’m going after some of those big meaty arthrodires though, the ones I can see gliding through the crystal-clear water with little signs on their back saying “EAT ME.” I’m already tired of trilobite though not yet tired of surviving.

Note: Can I eat any of these algal mats. Different from seaweed at sushi restaurant how exactly.
(Continue Reading…)

Genres: , ,

Escape Pod 1041: Love in the Time of Dust and Venom

Love in the Time of Dust and Venom originally appeared in 2013 Fiction River – Time Travelers.

Includes a form of assisted suicide.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:35 — 42.5MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Sponsored by Mixtape Stories

Love in the Time of Dust and Venom

By Sharon Joss

Using his walker to brace himself, Keiko watched her ancient grandfather stoop beside the packed dirt path and tug at a weed. Nearby, sprinklers sang shoop-shoop-shoop in the stillness, sending cascades of water across the wide expanse of lawns. She saw his eyes twinkle as he slapped the roots against the side of his worn black trousers. The scent of moist earth joined the fragrance of lavender and eucalyptus in the quiet July morning.  The old man stood and slowly put the dandelion in his pocket. He knew she didn’t approve, but this had become their little ritual.

When he first came to live with them, he spoke rarely, and then only Japanese; a language she struggled to recall from childhood. She found him to be a man of expression, rather than words. The first time she brought him to the LA County Arboretum he spoke to her of how much he missed his wife and home.  Now they came every Tuesday morning, after she dropped the boys off at school. There was no sense of time or country here.  They’d come to think of the botanical gardens as their special place.

He toddled over to their favorite bench; the rough wooden one beneath the purple jacaranda tree with a good view of the Queen Anne Cottage. Then, as the bees hummed around them, he took her hand as he often did, and her 97-year-old grandfather began to tell her about lightpulse technology. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Escape Pod 1040: Gods and Spirits Our Witnesses

Escape Pod 1040: Gods and Spirits Our Witnesses is an Escape Pod original.

Loss of an infant

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:32 — 37.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Sponsored by Mixtape Stories

Gods and Spirits Our Witnesses

by Rio Lombana

We met in a public-access data booth at night, during yet another tropical storm, long after the angry god of the sea had gorged himself fat on Earth’s old icecaps. Rain hammered the booth’s cracked plastic walls with such brutality that I didn’t hear you walk in. I was staring down the chart of jacked-up daily data rates when you sidled into the tiny booth with me, half-lit by a stuttering streetlight. Close enough to touch, in a space meant only for one. You squinted at me, like you were calculating whether I was friend or foe.

You were scrawny, soaked to the bone, no doubt seeking any shelter from the sea god’s rage. Only a year or two younger than me, maybe, but your slim shoulders made you seem half my size. And the way your pretty wet eyelashes clumped together ’round your storm-gray eyes sent my blood rushing and my chest swelling with an ancient kind of pride. Like I was born to do nothing but give you all I had.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 1037: We Who Live in the Heart (Part 3 of 3)

We Who Live in the Heart originally appeared in Clarkesworld, May 1, 2017.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:02 — 51.4MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Quantum Superposition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition

Cloudward Ho

https://dimension20.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Cloudward,_Ho!

Void Merch

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

We Who Live in the Heart (Part 3 of 3)

By Kelly Robson

(…Continued from Part 2)

Once we’re in the equatorial stream, we ride the wind until we get into the right general area. Then we wipe off the appetite suppressant, and hunger sends us straight into the arms of the nearest electrical storm.

The urge to feed is a powerful motivator for most organisms. Mama chases all the algae she can find, and gobbles it double-time. For us on the inside, it’s like an old-style history doc. Everyone stays strapped in their hammocks and rides out the weather as we pitch around on the high seas.

I always enjoy the feeding frenzy; it gets the blood flowing.

I’d just settled to enjoy the wild ride when Ricci pinged me.

Two crews tried surgical interventions on the regenerated tissue. Let me know what you think, okay? Maybe now we can convince them to let you help. (Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 1036: We Who Live in the Heart (Part 2 of 3)

We Who Live in the Heart originally appeared in Clarkesworld, May 1, 2017.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:39 — 53.6MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

We Who Live in the Heart (Part 2 of 3)

By Kelly Robson

(…Continued from Part 2)

Ricci got into my notes. I don’t keep them locked down; anyone can access them. Free and open distribution of data is a primary force behind the success of the human species, after all. Don’t we all learn that in the crèche?

Making data available doesn’t guarantee anyone will look at it, and if they do, chances are they won’t understand it. Ricci tried. She didn’t just skim through, she really studied. Shift after shift, she played with the numbers and gamed my simulation models. Maybe she slept. Maybe not.

I figured Ricci would come looking for me if she got stumped, so I de-hermited, banged around in the rumpus room, put myself to work on random little maintenance tasks.

When Ricci found me, I was in the caudal stump dealing with the accumulated waste pellets. Yes, that’s exactly what it sounds like: half-kilogram plugs of dry solid waste covered in wax and transferred from the lavs by the hygiene bots. (Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 1035: We Who Live in the Heart (Part 1 of 3)

We Who Live in the Heart originally appeared in Clarkesworld, May 1, 2017.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:00 — 54.1MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

We Who Live in the Heart

By Kelly Robson

Ricci slipped in and out of consciousness as we carried her to the anterior sinus and strapped her into her hammock. Her eyelids drooped but she kept forcing them wide. After we finished tucking her in, she pulled an handheld media appliance out of her pocket and called her friend Jane.

“You’re late,” Jane said. The speakers flattened her voice slightly. “Are you okay?”

Ricci was too groggy to speak. She poked her hand through the hammock’s electrostatic membrane and panned the appliance around the sinus. Eddy and Chara both waved as the lens passed over them, but Jane was only interested in one thing.

“Show me your face, Ricci. Talk to me. What’s it like in there?”

Ricci coughed, clearing her throat. “I dunno. It’s weird. I can’t really think.” Her voice slurred from the anesthetic. (Continue Reading…)

hot mature website