Escape Artists

Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: divs on March 11, 2019, 08:28:56 PM

Title: EP668: The Harmonic Resonance of Ejiro Anaborhi
Post by: divs on March 11, 2019, 08:28:56 PM
Escape Pod 668: The Harmonic Resonance of Ejiro Anaborhi  (http://escapepod.org/2019/02/21/escape-pod-668-the-harmonic-resonance-of-ejiro-anaborhi/)

Author: Wole Talabi (http://escapepod.org/people/wole-talabi/)
Narrator: Maxine Moore (http://escapepod.org/people/maxine-moore/)
Host: Mur Lafferty (http://escapepod.org/people/mur-lafferty/)
Audio Producer: Summer Brooks (http://escapepod.org/people/summer-brooks/)

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The spindly, sleek ship hurtled forward at hyperliminal speed, blurring its own intricately patterned design in six dimensions and wrecking the fabric of space–time in its wake. Its captain adjusted the dial on the control panel, accelerating the ship three thousand lightspeed units faster in Planck time. Reality shifted.

The sphere that was chasing the ship matched their maneuver and kept the distance—if it could still be called that—between them, unchanged. The sphere suddenly added an extra-dimensional rotation to its motion and burst ahead with a surge of energy that set off a singularity event behind it. It slammed itself against the ship finally, throwing off gigantic streams of pure energy, and latched on to it with long, spiny hydra-like tendrils that branched into manifold others.

The sphere began to consume the ship in a dazzling display of fractured light and twisted gravity, tendrils reaching into it like the fingers of some monstrous creature seeking sustenance. The ship’s captain, in a panic, condensed every aspect of themself into one place for the first time since they’d first gained super-sentience. They could not let the ship be taken. If the object it carried fell into the hands of the beings that controlled the sphere, every conscious aspect of the universe could become a weapon in their hands. It was better if all was lost; destroyed forever. The object pulsed a thought in agreement with them. They resonated with resolve. This would be the final act of the Great War. It had to be done.

The captain pushed a gray dot above the main control panel and the universe stood still for the most minuscule of moments before a bright azure stream of pure plasma tore its way through the core of the ship, expanding at imperceivable speeds. In a flash, it obliterated the ship, the sphere, and everything within a five-hundred-galaxy radius before finally pausing to allow something like an explosion occur. Time and space became shrapnel. Pressure and temperature became meaningless abstractions in a bubble of broken reality. The universe trembled.


(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif) Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://traffic.libsyn.com/escapepod/Escape_Pod_668_HarmonicResonanceEjiroAnaborhi.mp3)
Title: EP668: The Harmonic Resonance of Ejiro Anaborhi
Post by: SemaphoreRaven on March 17, 2019, 02:28:46 PM
My take on this was a lot less optimistic than Mur's. I saw less "humanity ascending to the next level" and more "we are Borg, you will be assimilated." The way anyone absorbed into the hive mind turned instantly to bringing others in felt like a spreading infection and left me wondering if there's anything left under the all-consuming need to grow larger.
Title: Re: EP668: The Harmonic Resonance of Ejiro Anaborhi
Post by: drewpereli on May 08, 2019, 05:36:10 PM
I loved how this episode starts out with existential conflict on a galactic scale, then zooms in to a single character and her comparatively personal, local problems. I love the feeling that there is so much more to the universe, and to the object Ejiro finds, than she or the reader knows.

As an aside, I would really love to read more fiction in the vein of the first part of this story. If anyone has any recommendations on that sort of hyper-dimensional space opera, I'm all ears!
Title: Re: EP668: The Harmonic Resonance of Ejiro Anaborhi
Post by: divs on May 10, 2019, 05:31:50 PM
You might like Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep."
Title: Re: EP668: The Harmonic Resonance of Ejiro Anaborhi
Post by: CoonSkin on May 14, 2019, 08:58:18 AM
My take on this was a lot less optimistic than Mur's. I saw less "humanity ascending to the next level" and more "we are Borg, you will be assimilated." The way anyone absorbed into the hive mind turned instantly to bringing others in felt like a spreading infection and left me wondering if there's anything left under the all-consuming need to grow larger.

I totally agree. Perhaps this is the way it functioned as a weapon. Absorbing the enemy into one consciousness.
Title: Re: EP668: The Harmonic Resonance of Ejiro Anaborhi
Post by: CryptoMe on December 06, 2019, 08:19:46 PM
I agree with SemaphoreRaven that this was bleak and creepy, not optimistic. That said, I really enjoyed the second part of the story (with the kids finding and working the object). To be honest, I completely forgot all about the first part until drewpereli mentioned it and I went back to re-listen. That's not to say that the first part was bad. I actually like space opera. It's just that somehow for me, I dissociated the two parts in my head. Odd.