via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Escape Pod 677 Valedictorian (Flashback Friday) - Escape Pod via Instapaper http://bit.ly/2UYueJ2 There are three things Zinhle decides, when she is old enough to understand. The first is that she will never, ever, give less than her best to anything she tries to do. The second is that she will not live in fear. via Pocket

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io During the day, James A. Miller works on Milking Robots in the Madison Wisconsin area. At night, he spends time with his family and does his best to come up with fun and creative fiction. He is a first reader for Allegory e-zine and member of the Co… EP540 The Right Answer - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2catQQy

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Erin Cashier is fond of the unreliable narrator. The things that interest me most are Disneyland (not kidding), esoteric philosophy books, alchemy as it relates to Jungian theories, William Blake, and Super Paper Mario. via Pocket EP537 Honeycomb Girls - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2bi9Exq

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io “Congratulations, Mrs. Costa,” chirped the young Life Center nurse. “You’re ready to go home! Here’s your shield.” Maria raised the infant in her arms high enough for the nurse to slip the slim, silver band around her waist. via Pocket

The Last Stellar Death Metal Opera By Elly Bangs Raya eases power into the singularity engine and all her senses sharpen with the glorious, brutal reality of the moment: dead ahead there’s the blackli…

Points of Origin by Marissa Lingen Most people who have reached their eighties without raising children have every right to believe that they will go on not raising them, and Judith and I were no diff…

A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide By Sarah Pinsker Andy tattooed his left forearm with Lori’s name on a drunken night in his seventeenth year. “Lori & Andy Forever and Ever” was the full text, all i…

Martian Chronicles by Cory Doctorow They say you can’t smell anything through a launch-hood, but I still smelled the pove in the next seat as the space-attendants strapped us into our acceleration cou…

Heart of Ash, Heart of Steam By Malon Edwards You squeeze through the doorway past the bouncer wearing the massive Conquest Knight XV exo and make way your over to Nyanza Swift. The Soul Queen’s blackout is spacious, but minimalist. Low sightlines. No shadowy alcoves. No jacks. No data exchange. No electricity. This is the best blackout in …

The Big So-So By Erika Satifka We’re both sitting on the rotting front porch one muggy July day when Dorcas asks me if I want to break into Paradise with her. I lace up my sneakers and we do the old huff-and-puff up Negley Avenue to the big Cygnian compound on the hill. It’s dark, which …

Hoping for Red by Adam Knight Vixen had just one question for the doctor: “Can you do it?” Doctor Fizzwinkle smiled and patted the fur on Vixen’s neck. Outside of the office, the winds whipped furiously, as they did most of the time north of the Arctic Circle. In the office, though, the glow of …

A Fine Night for Tea and Bludgeoning By Beth Cato Summer 1901 Upon my arrival at the Durham’s dance, it was quickly apparent to me that their daughter’s new purebred fiancé was not the evening’s star as gossip had foretold. Instead, a dashing green-skinned gentleman had garnered a pack of giggling admirers. I had never …

Some Remarks on the Reproductive Strategy of the Common Octopus By Bogi Takács So let’s do it this way. I’ll show you whatever I want and you’ll believe me, because I’m an octopus. I might as well get some benefit out of it, not that we ever had much – especially not since you left. Humans, …

Beatrix Released By Shaenon K. Garrity The lichen in the cupboard has at last begun to sing. It sings in two-part harmony, bel canto, essaying a faultless duet with itself. What a strange and lovely fairy! I am convinced more and more that my earlier theory was correct, that the lichen is a bipartite organism …

AUTHOR: Beth Goder NARRATOR: Amy H. Sturgis HOST: Alasdair Stuart Murder or a Duck 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… Beth Goder worked as an archivist at Stanford before becoming a full-time mom […]

Paradise Regained By Edward Lerner My head hurts. I expect it: this is winter. I want it to be spring. Paradise does not ask what I want. The winter is young, and I think the dogs are not yet so hungry as to attack me. Still, I hold tight to my spear. Dogs or no …

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 …

The Revolution, Brought to You by Nike, Part 2 by Andrea Phillips 5. THE LAUNCH Launch day came on a bright Tuesday, amid a flurry of reports that the executive office had pushed through a series of contracts requiring the president’s own hotel properties be the preferred vendor for all federal travel going forward. Another …

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 …

And Then There Were (N-One) by Sarah Pinsker I considered declining the invitation. It was too weird, too expensive, too far, too dangerous, too weird. Way too weird. An invitation like that would never come again. I’d regret it if I didn’t go. It lay on our kitchen table for three weeks while I argued …

And Then There Were (N-One), Part 2 by Sarah Pinsker Not me, my logic brain understood, even though some tiny part of me screamed something was wrong. I’d made it through the entire afternoon talking with people who were more like me than an identical twin would be, but the body was somehow more real. …