Oracle By Dominica Phetteplace The two biggest applications for predictive software are killing people and selling things. Rita was quite successful at the latter. She founded a nail-polish-of-the-month club that used an online personality quiz to determine customer preferences. Bold cremes for basics, chunky glitters for the outrageous, and dark, sparkly metallics for edgy, forward-thinking geniuses …

Disarm By Vylar Kaftan Excerpt We kept in touch through the war, when he messaged me about marching through upstate New York. He always started the same way: “Dear Ryan, Please come kick my commanding officer in the balls.” Then he’d tell me about the latest mess–cracks in their radiation suits, or toxic …

The Revolution, Brought to You by Nike by Andrea Phillips 1. THE BRIEF Corazon clicked to the slide she’d been dreading: long-term trends for brand engagement. It was dire. She focused on the smudgy mirror at the far end of the conference room, looking past her team to her own reflection. She pulled her shoulders …

Imma Gonna Finish You Off by Marina J. Lostetter On the examining table lounged a body. It was an unremarkable body–rather wrinkly, with an inordinate amount of hair in all the wrong places and too few clothes for most people’s liking, but otherwise nothing to write your congressman about. The only thing special about the …

Me, Meg, and The Thing By Gian-Paul Bergeron I’m Inroom making honest credit, doing Daily, counting breaths, when Meg messages me with extreme urgent markation to say that she got a Thing and I’m like Meg, you loon, please, and then she stresses the urgency with absolute dire markation – i.e. there has never been …

Into the Breach By Malon Edwards I’m off my bunk and into my jodhpurs, knee-high leather boots and flight jacket the moment the long range air attack klaxons seep into my nightly dream about Caracara. Muscle memory and Secret Service training kick in; I’m on auto-pilot (no pun intended) and a good ways down the …

The Sixes, the Wisdom, and the Wasp By E J Delaney Fereshteh Nemati was scared. She knew she was gripping her bow too tightly. She knew she should never ever aim at another person. But it wasn’t bad technique she was thinking of, or breaking her father’s golden rule. It wasn’t even the sight of poor …

Lonely Robot on a Rocket Ship in Space By A. Merc Rustad Byron scribbled crib notes on his wrist the night before he planned to come out to his dads. He’d told all his friends he was sick so he would have an excuse to stay home Friday night. It wasn’t like he was lying. …

When We Fall by Kameron Hurley I don’t remember the first time I was abandoned and forgotten, but I have told the story of the second time so often that when the memory boils up it feels hot and gummy, like the air that day. Whoever cared for me – and I can’t be certain …

Sparg By Brian Trent Sparg had difficulty making pancakes, but he was trying. In the empty apartment, he clutched the silver bowl with one tentacle to hold it steady. With another, he attempted the far trickier business of whipping the batter as he’d seen his owners do many, many times. The bowl was bigger than …

Cat Pictures, Please By Naomi Kritzer I don’t want to be evil. I want to be helpful. But knowing the optimal way to be helpful can be very complicated. There are all these ethical flow charts — I guess the official technical jargon would be “moral codes” — one for each religion plus dozens more. …

Wasps Make Honey By Penelope Evans The scrap heaps at the edge of the settlement are taller than the average colony building. They offer up next to nothing good. But the factory doesn’t want either of us anymore. Power cells don’t come cheap now. In fact, they barely come at all. “Sometimes I think we should …

The Sweetness at the End By Jenny Rae Rappaport This is how it happens: Tony and Ma are in their seats in the skimmer, strapped in and grinning at us. Daddy and I kiss them good bye; take a photo of them in their spacesuits for posterity, and wave at them. We stay behind at the …

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 …

Given Sufficient Desperation By Bogi Takács An ice cream cone. A ceramic mug—brown with a single green stripe around the rim. A smartphone—I don’t recognise the brand. It’s been a while. Two sheaves of corn. A plush caterpillar toy from some cartoon. A table—rather worn, I’d say Danish Modern, but I’m not sure. I need …

Home Sick By M. Darusha Wehm I was encoding a batch of classic ebooks when the ulu-aliki walked in to the library, the outdoors scent of gardenias and overripe mangoes following him. “Afternoon, chief,” I said, pushing my chair back a bit. Joseph Seru spoke Tuvaluan with his family and the other council members, but …

An Equal Share of the Bone By Karen Osborne To kill a theriida, you need gunboats and suits, laser cutters and open-mawed cargo bays, brawn and a stout heart, and God on your side. We, of course, had none of that. I learned in the merchant marines to never shoot a theriida with a standard …

Nozizwe and Almahdi By J. R. Dawson She was a princess and he was a prince, and they had been genetically made for each other. The science had been precise down to their anatomical make-up, the blood and the speed in which that blood pulsed through their perfectly symmetrical hearts. His name was Almahdi. He had […]

That Game We Played During the War By Carrie Vaughn From the moment she left the train station, absolutely everybody stopped to look at Calla. They watched her walk across the plaza and up the steps of the Northward Military Hospital. In her dull gray uniform she was like a storm cloud moving among the khaki […]

Unit Two Does Her Makeup By Laura Duerr Doctor Spencer has brought me an artist. My eyes on the outside of the building register the identity of everyone who enters, including her: Suzanne Chantal Salinas, age 26, licensed esthetician and makeup artist, amateur painter. I cut the feed after .3 seconds. The security feed could tell […]

Trash Talk By Holly Schofield I’m not a complainer, not me. I roll with the punches. I’ll be just another dead trash collector in about ten minutes but, hey, that’s okay. My son won’t die and, here’s a bonus, my life insurance policy will pay out. Unless they consider it suicide. Here we are, hugging …

Wet Fur By Jeremiah Tolbert You can tell the dog owners when they board the plane; they see the black cloud hovering in the first row and their eyes widen in shock, then narrow in fear, followed by a glimmer of a smile, a hope as they glance at so many occupied seats. A hopeful …

AUTHOR: Bojan Ratković NARRATOR: Steve Anderson HOST: Norm Sherman Ride the Dragon is an Escape Pod original. Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our Wikia Thank you for visiting us on Facebook and Twitter about the author… Bojan Ratković is a writer from Serbia, now living in Ontario, Canada. His work […]

RELEASED 3.August.2016 AUTHOR: Bethany Edwards NARRATOR: George Hrab HOST: Tina Connolly WARNING: profane language and violence This story has not been previously published. Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Thank you for visiting us on Facebook and Twitter about the author… Mystery! about the narrator… Multi-instrumentalist, singer, […]

AUTHOR: Gareth D Jones NARRATOR: Andrew Clarke HOST: Norm Sherman This story has not been previously published. Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Thank you for visiting us on Facebook and Twitter about the author… I’m an environmental scientist, writer and father of 5. My stories have […]

AUTHOR: Kristin Janz NARRATOR: Ibba Armancas HOST: Tina Connolly This story has not been published previously. Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our Wikia Thank you for visiting us on Facebook and Twitter about the author… Kristin Janz is a Canadian speculative fiction writer who has lived in the […]

AUTHOR: Michael Glyde NARRATOR: Joe Williams HOST: Alasdair Stuart This story has not been published previously. Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our Wikia Thank you for visiting us on Facebook and Twitter about the author… M. Glyde recently moved 1813 miles from Pittsburgh, PA to El Paso, TX, …

by Sandy Parsons narrated by Nicola Seaton-Clark This story has not been previously published. At the end of the show, there were excerpts from a speech given by President Barack Obama 4 days after 49 people were executed in a shooting rampage in Orlando, FL, USA which you can see in full here: https://youtu.be/QMvxpyeq6xU Discuss on …

by Edward Ashton read by Josh Roseman This story has not been previously published. Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Thank you for visiting us on Facebook and Twitter about the author… Edward Ashton is a clinical research scientist and writer living in Rochester, New York. His short […]

These stories have not been previously published. Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Thank you for visiting us on Facebook and Twitter about the authors… Ben Hallert: I live in Oregon with my wife, two children, a plane, and a reach that regularly exceeds my grasp. […]