Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: divs on July 04, 2020, 04:38:13 AM
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Escape Pod 739: The Nightmare Lights of Mars (Summer Flashback) (https://escapepod.org/2020/07/02/escape-pod-739-the-nightmare-lights-of-mars/)
Author: Brian Trent (https://escapepod.org/people/brian-trent/)
Narrator: Veronica Giguere (https://escapepod.org/people/veronica-giguere/)
Host: Alasdair Stuart (https://escapepod.org/people/alasdair-stuart/)
Audio Producers: Mat Weller (https://escapepod.org/people/mat-weller/) and Adam Pracht (https://escapepod.org/people/adam-pracht/)
Escape Pod 739: The Nightmare Lights of Mars (Summer Flashback) was originally published as Escape Pod, episode 415 on September 27, 2013.
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Content Warning:
Language and scariness.
Before discovering the moths, Clarissa Lang stumbled blind in the Martian sandstorm and admitted she was about to die because of a painting.
Granules of sand flew past her head at 90 kph and crunched between her teeth. The storm hissed around her ears, a terrible insistence that she hush forever. There was no excuse for this death, Clarissa thought. Weather advisories had been in place for an hour. Her death would become a digital footnote, filed under foolishness, for all time.
She staggered blind and tacked through the needle-spray. Red sand piled around her neck and shoulders, grew around her mouth like exaggerated lipstick.
“Overlay!” she shouted — tried to shout — but her mouth instantly filled with gritty particulate. She panicked then, the first moment of true mindless panic. But the Martian Positioning Satellite had heard her cry: Maureen’s property map sprang up in her left eye, drawn scarlet against each blink.
The house was thirty meters northwest. Upwind.
Clarissa tucked herself into a protective ball and scuttled sideways, like a crab. The sand struck her exposed hands and face in a shifting, relentless wave.
I’ll never make it.
Listen to this week's EscapePod. (https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/escapepod/Escape_Pod_739_The_Nightmare_Lights_of_Mars_Summer_Flashback.mp3)
Follow us on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtLeMuTcFDtF2C3MiF6GPfQ) and Spotify (https://open.postURLify.com/show/6G8vOC5f6ZuhWmeW4cmgUG?si=07jmhoKQR1CMfcfuhg24qw)!
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Not a fan of this one. I didn’t like that the one-note abusive spouse was a lesbian, especially since the writer is male. The characterization just appears gratuitous. If there had been some nuance to the character I might have felt differently. As it was, I couldn’t even finish the story.