Posts Tagged ‘Alexis Goble’

Image of a robotic dinosaur

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Cast of Wonders 385: Be a Thunder, Release a Roar

Originally published in Robot Dinosaur Fiction! (May 2018)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:54 — 16.9MB)

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Be a Thunder, Release a Roar

by Osahon Ize-Iyamu

It’s January 2028 and young Uwaila watches the TV, fixated at what’s right in front of her. The dinosaurs appear with a mighty boom, with feet that hit the earth like a rumble. They make everything look so small, all humans look so little, make everybody afraid. They hold a certain kind of power Uwaila needs, a roar and gentleness that makes them perfect to watch.

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Image of a robotic dinosaur

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Cast of Wonders 384: Sphexa, Start Dinosaur

Originally published in Robot Dinosaur Fiction! (August 2018)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:45 — 13.1MB)

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Sphexa, Start Dinosaur

by Nibedita Sen

Asha—Ash to friends—wedges the maintenance door open wide enough to slip into the darkened interior of the abandoned ride. Inside smells like rust and stale water and plastic fused with metal.

“Sphexa,” he says. “Light.”

The small robot bobbing behind him clicks, casting a circle of illumination on the concrete floor. He made Sphexa in shop class at school, patching together an old Echo, a frame salvaged from a drone, a rolling toy robot, and a few other things, because if you’re going to be that stereotype of the Indian kid good at engineering, you might as well lean all the way in.

“Reminder,” Sphexa says as they make their way down the narrow walkway lining the tunnel. “Event upcoming in two hours: Pick Mei up for prom.”

“I’m working on it, Sphexa.”

(Continue Reading…)

Image of a robotic dinosaur

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Cast of Wonders 383: Five Functions of Your Bionosaur

Originally published in Robot Dinosaur Fiction! (May 2018)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:36 — 12.9MB)

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Five Functions of Your Bionosaur

by Rachael K. Jones

1.

Your parents first activate your bionosaur when they bring you home from the hospital. The bionosaur was a baby shower gift from your mom’s favorite aunt. They were nervous about its size, the stainless steel maw, the retractable razorclaws inside its stubby little arms, but the aunt had insisted. She’d programmed it herself, covered its titanium-alloy skeleton in top-grade synthskin featherscales, and pre-loaded it with educational apps.

When your bionosaur’s eyes first flare to life, it scans tiny, squalling you and reaches out a stubby claw to rock you. When it starts humming a jazzy rendition of the Batman theme, you quiet down and sleep.

Your bionosaur can differentiate between hunger-cries and dirty-diaper-cries. When your parents realize this, they call up the aunt and apologize for doubting. But your bionosaur just keeps singing, its glowing red eyes fixed upon you like you’re the center of all gravity, the origin of its universe.

One thing your great-aunt forgot to mention: bionosaurs imprint for life.

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Cast of Wonders 382: No Matter Where; Of Comfort No One Speak

Cast of Wonders 382: No Matter Where; Of Comfort No One Speak is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content Warnings: abuse and suicide

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:51 — 26.9MB)

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No Matter Where; Of Comfort No One Speak

by Kate Baker

Tucked behind the cracks in the plaster and the peeling, wallpaper print, we watch you draw a blade. You stand in the kitchen, holding the steel in your right hand. A finger slides down the sharp edge, testing its strength as you do calculations in your head. The slow creep of a smile indicates you are happy with your choice. Drawn away in visions to the future, everything is interrupted by a quick slip and slice as you drop the knife. We notice the dribble of blood, a bead welling at the tip, inviting a hungry mouth. You bring the cut to your lips and suck on it a moment and then examine the depth.

No stitches required.

Despite its already proven efficacy, you reach for the knife again, and then for the sharpening block, and run the blade against stone. The familiar grating sound that would normally set your nerves afire. We cover our ears in this dark place despite the muffled transfer through your space to ours. We know what these determined machinations mean.

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silhouette of virtual human on circuit pattern 3d illustration , represent artificial technology.

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Cast of Wonders 381: The Lie Misses You

Cast of Wonders 381: The Lie Misses You is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content Warning: grief (death of family members)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:26 — 26.5MB)

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The Lie Misses You

by John Wiswell

The Lie can’t wait to see her sister again. Every night she draws another picture of the two of them together, sometimes in space, sometimes playing baseball, always in crayon, always looking shoddy like the work of her father’s left hand. But The Lie is recovering from the Contact Plague, and it affects motor functions in survivors. Her parents bring this up every time her sister calls.

She’s calling tonight, not that it’s night where her sister is stationed. The Mothership Nebraska is fighting in a place with three suns, so it’s probably always morning there. The Lie doodles a yellow crayon triple-morning while Mom and Dad squeeze together around the laptop. They try not to stare at it, pretending that cleaning their reading glasses and mending socks are just what they meant to be doing an hour after the time Vi was supposed to call.

To The Lie, that is what they meant to do. Her parents are so practical.

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Cast of Wonders 380: Little Wonders 23: Comfort is Universal

Cast of Wonders 380: Little Wonders 23: Comfort is Universal is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:24 — 31.9MB)

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Taking the Nine to the Last Shop

by Craig Robert Saunders

I.

The last shop before the fog is my favourite shop of all. It has candy, which is best. It sells shrimp which never, ever goes off, krill, newspapers, mops and buckets, and air packets you can open that tickle your tentacles just like the popping candy, which Grandma lets me have even though she hates the sound of the air packs and the poppers. She likes the hardboiled sweets. They have what seems like endless rows of jars of those behind the counter. You can buy things for the house there, and things for dull days when the seas are hard and rough and you can’t go out, or when the fog’s so heavy it squashes you up so you can’t see above your parapet, and all you can do is draw yourself inside and listen to your mother muttering and feel the sway of Grandma moving underneath you both. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 379: Philemaphobia

Cast of Wonders 379: Philemaphobia is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content Warning: Spiders; body horror; teen cruelty

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:04 — 20.6MB)

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Philemaphobia

by Josh Pearce

“Amanda,” Mother said, as soon as she came in from school: “Amanda,” in that tone of voice that said she was so tired of being angry about this.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Amanda said automatically. She hadn’t even had a chance to drop her bookbag and search the pantry for a snack. Mother still had the kitchen phone in her hand, arms crossed tightly.

“Want to tell me why your homeroom teacher is calling me about your behavior, again? What was it this time? What did you say?”

“Nothing! I don’t talk in class anymore.” Maybe that was the problem? Mrs. Kennedy scowling at her whenever Amanda clamped her lips tight and shook her head in response to a question.

“What, then? You tell me, Amanda Bull, why you’re in trouble today.” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 378: Common Grounds and Various Teas (Banned Books Week)

Cast of Wonders 378: Common Grounds and Various Teas (Banned Books Week) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:52 — 19.6MB)

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Common Grounds & Various Teas

by Sherin Nicole

Mama’s fingernails are mesmerizing. They’re black and shiny as volcanic glass but not polished. Her skin is a deeper shade than North Carolina red clay, and her hair is pulled up high in two top knots. Long dreadlocks cascade down over both her ears. If she’s older than thirty  no one can tell. Right now, I’m giving her serious side eye. She won’t stop blabbering and babbling and telling her grifter tales.

“I told that man, you cannot sell me this bucket on wheels. It’s beneath me,” she says in an accent as brown as her skin. “He didn’t like that. Now, rather than me convincing him, he’s convincing me to lower the price. ‘Til I have mercy, I take this car from him for $45 and I let him buy the beers.”

I huff and turn away from her. “Can you stop now?” I mumble.

“I could,” Mama says, like she’s sharing secrets, “but I could also be swallowed and spit back out as something flavorless.” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 377: This Is Not A Ghost Story (Banned Books Week)

Cast of Wonders 377: This Is Not A Ghost Story (Banned Books Week) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content Warning: profanity

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:49 — 21.4MB)

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This Is Not a Ghost Story

by V. Medina

In the darkness of her bedroom, after her mother has gone to bed and she’s supposed to have done the same, she tells stories to the ghosts. She would do more for them but they never ask for anything else and she doesn’t know what more to do. They listen, gentle whispers all around her, urging her to continue, begging her for a few more words, just a little more of her time. They crave the stories she has to offer them and even when she is young, she feels the pull of narrative against her bones.

The ghosts are kind in their need, not pushing or screaming but quietly pleading, and she was not raised to deny anyone. She is the quiet kid, the good girl, the sweetheart. She knows her role, and it doesn’t matter what she wants because everyone already knows who she is before she ever gets the chance to show them.

People look at her, see the way she moves, the white cane in her hand, the way she holds books so close to her face. They all think they know her story, even before she says a word. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 376: The Ways of Walls and Words (Banned Books Week)

Originally published at Tor.com (April 15, 2015)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:01:57 — 57.2MB)

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The Ways of Walls and Words

by Sabrina Vourvoulias

Solitreo

“If it were not for Thee, what would become of me?”

She’s not speaking to me when she says this. Her poetry nests behind a prison’s walls. I am an unknown noise on the other side of her door—the only spot where sound enters or exits her world—a sweep of bristle against wood, some transitory trace of life that has nothing to do with her.

She and her people are in cells lined along a corridor in the deepest reaches of the convent. On occasion the mentally disturbed have been kept here, tended to and made safe by walls so thick they are more than an arm’s length. These people, however, are all one family: a mother; an adult son; four older daughters; and this one, who has spent nearly half her life in here.

That was all the information the Dominican Brothers shared with me the day I started. Except that I must not attempt to speak to the girl or her family through their doors. The Brothers made me swear this before I swept even one stone.

In the language I share with jailer and jailed, my name is Bienvenida, though my Nahuatl name is different. By the Brothers’ reckoning, it has been 1,562 years since the death of God. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 375: Reclaiming Our Narratives (Banned Books Week)

Cast of Wonders 375: Reclaiming Our Narratives (Banned Books Week) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:51 — 35.3MB)

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Our Skin Will Now Bear the Testimonies

by Innocent Chizaram Ilo

“Nduka, you better hurry or you’ll be late for school! Your breakfast is getting cold and you know you don’t like when curds form in your pap!” Aniele calls from the kitchen.

“Yes Mama,” Nduka answers from his bedroom.

The boy tiptoes to the door and gently bolts it before unbuttoning his school shirt. He stands in front of the mirror and looks at the string of words that snails along his belly. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 374: Take Heart (Part 2 of 2)

Cast of Wonders 374: Take Heart (Part 2 of 2) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:56 — 24.3MB)

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Take Heart (continued)

by Claire Eliza Bartlett

The break had been clean and would heal up nicely. That was the good news.

The bad news was, well, everything else. Julia entered the factory hospital an hour after Magdalena had been patched up, wearing a storm cloud face. She flopped into one of the cheap metal folding chairs, making it scrape across the floor.

Neither of them spoke for long moments. Magdalena wanted to muster the courage to apologize, but shame choked her whenever she tried to speak. She’d tried to be cleverer than Julia. Now she was more useless than ever.

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