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Escape Pod: What Any Dead Thing Wants

43:16 recording · AUTO · 2 speakers

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Brief overview

Escape Pod airs part two of Amy Ogden's story, where an exorcist buries a ghost's crew.

  1. Exorcism here is emotion, not ritualHob builds a lifelike CFM illusion so the dead CFM feels enough confusion and anger to dissolve on its own.
  2. Hob is provoking Ozzy on purposeOzzy asks whether the exo insults were the laziest ever attempt to exorcise him, and Hob says he could have kept egging him on far longer.
  3. Planets die because rehousing people costs moreHob reasons that housing a population for the months a terraformation takes is pricier than leaving them on a world worth nothing economically.
Executive Summary AI
  • Host Tina Connolly introduces Part 2 of What Any Dead Thing Wants by Amy Ogden, a three-part serial first published in Psychopomp, narrated by Isaac Harwood and produced by Summer Brooks, with content notes for swearing and destruction of galactic ecosystems.1:49
  • Over a shrimp-flavoured meal mix in the habitat galley, Hob offers to send a posthumous message for Ozzy, the haunt attached to him, and Ozzy admits he has no one who would want to hear from him, while Hob admits the same about himself.4:53
  • A recon drone sends Hob down a ravine past birch trees to the burnt wreck of Ozzy's small ship, big enough for four or five crew, which sits in a planned settlement's lumber preserve and will be hauled off to a dump.12:49
  • Pressed on how many planets he flipped as a terraformer, Hob answers just one, then uses a crafted illusion of a CFM to draw the dead CFM into a mating display so its grief and confusion dissolve it.24:48
  • The next day Hob digs a shallow grave for the gnawed bones he identifies as Ozzy's, climbs the wreck to recover three corpses, a first aid kit, next-of-kin contacts and the data safe, and buries the crew at Ozzy's word while Ozzy calls them his co-workers and his family.36:20
Key Quote
“Quiet is a rare commodity in the habitat.”
— Isaac Harwood3:33
Key Quote
“Sorry I can't offer you anything.”
— Hob4:53
Key Quote
“No, I don't have people.”
— Ozzy6:57