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More Tomorrow

37:07 recording · AUTO · 2 speakers

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Brief overview

A stranded time-traveling paleontologist keeps a survival journal, insisting on more tomorrow even when everything fails.

  1. The journal is the only thing she controlsShe writes until the pen runs out of ink, or till she runs out of paper, or till she gets eaten.
  2. Science habits survive when nothing else doesBetween attacks she files paper ideas on trilobite invincibility, toxic loading and fish flavors during speciation.
  3. "More tomorrow" is the hope in the storyMerle Lafferty says the two words turn the tone: sometimes hope just means getting up in the morning.
Executive Summary AI
  • Host Merle Lafferty introduces an Escape Pod flashback, "More Tomorrow" by Premi Mohamed, narrated by Dani Daly, first published in Automa Review in 2018 and reprinted in Escape Pod in 2020.1:02
  • The story opens on day five as a stranded paleontologist logs that trilobites are inedible armor and attitude, that they bite, and that a chipped blue flint axe is the only way to crack them open.1:57
  • A recap explains the accident: shielding that read green had turned red, the team arrived maybe 300-ish million years early, a type 3 Ducharme Vortex dumped them and their gear in the ocean, and an ammonite destroyed the primary temp box.10:18
  • Her colleague Hap left on a three-days-out, three-days-in collecting trip with most of the equipment and the only knife and never returned, so by day 21 she builds rope, a ballast belt and a harness to dive alone for the spare box.28:10
  • She reaches the spare, but the box drops her into a smoggy, bombed-out future dated the 14th, the day after they left, where she rations thirteen packages of freeze-dried food, half a canteen of water and five live trilobites, and still signs off "More tomorrow."30:01
Key Quote
“but I want to do brave things. I want to be remembered as doing brave things. That's all.”
— Dani Daly12:49
Key Quote
“Please stop touching me when I sleep, Trilobugs.”
— Dani Daly18:12
Key Quote
“Stop touching my stuff!”
— Dani Daly26:03