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The Smell of the Planet I Was Born On

32:50 recording · EN · 2 speakers

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Brief overview

Engineered workers outlast the humans who owned them, then reclaim the planet they built.

  1. Patience is the workers' only weaponBuilt to last millennia, they advance in imperceptible steps, like a river carving a valley through a mountain.
  2. Dependence is engineered, not accidentalWithout tetrahydroxyethylamine, oxaloglycine and vitamin B15 from the sapiens' machines, Homo astris cells degrade and they cannot move.
  3. Denial of reality precedes collapseThe seven-pointed-star faction's claim that this planet is Earth grows into a war that wrecks the terraforming systems.
Executive Summary AI
  • Escape Pod episode 1030, hosted by Merle Lafferty, presents "The Smell of the Planet I Was Born On" by Chilean architect and developer Rodrigo Kuligovsky, narrated by Hugo Award-winning editor Julia Rios.0:50
  • The narrator Kaleye is a Homo astris labourer printed on Tereshkova 8172-D, 15 light years from Earth, from the implanted mind state of Mohamed Lee, an indentured solar-farm engineer who secretly dreamed of escaping his indenture.4:51
  • After 1,600 years of building rings and magnetic catapults, six of seven cold ships arrive and the workers meet Agustin Ichavaria, while the supervisor routines keep them obedient by locking them out of the drug machines for a month every 10 years.11:33
  • Six hundred years on, a faction claiming the planet is really Earth wins five of the 33 council seats, and a war of nukes breaks the systems keeping the air breathable and the volcanoes under control, driving the sapiens into bunkers.25:27
  • With the overseers consumed by their own collapse, the workers spend a few months replicating the drug machines, wait out the hot war for centuries, and finally walk out onto a thin-aired, dark-skied surface that smells like home again.27:33
Key Quote
“The real lesson is clear. Do what we're told.”
— Julia Rios11:33
Key Quote
“Nobody tells him that we've already been working for the past 1600 years to get the planet ready while he and his people slept.”
— Julia Rios13:58
Key Quote
“Without you people, we'd be living in caves and breathing through a hose.”
— Julia Rios21:09