Well, I've been behind on my podcast listening and missed out on the lively discussion for this one. But I had to come in and comment because it isn't often that we have a story that launches itself into my personal Escape-Pod-All-Time-Top-10 company (I guess about 1 in 40 stories, strictly speaking). This one did. It did the thing that the very best SF does for me--put me in the mind of someone different from myself and made me care sooo much about their struggles. Struggles that wouldn't be my struggles but that I empathize with anyway. Excellent, excellent work. Of course, in this case the mind different from mine isn't an alien one, it's a very human one. People who are more similar to Annie than they are to me will read the story, which adds another layer of interest/excitement.
Just to reply a bit to some discussions on the threads above, I am not in any way personally or professionally involved with ASD, but having read things written by those that are, I think the neurotypical label is very important and not just a "you label us so we'll label you" sort of thing (though surely some of that exists--which is fair!). First off, it avoids the term "normal" which is crucial for all kinds of value reasons--thinking differently from neurotypical people creates a lot of challenges in the world we live in but it doesn't make people less intelligent or capable, as this story indicates. Second, my understanding is that people with the various autism spectrum disorders--even those with the same diagnosis--often think as differently from each other as any of them do from neurotypical people. So, in a way, neurotypical is a much more accurate label than autism is, for example. My (again, not super-well informed) understanding is that neurotypical describes a particular kind of thinking and ASD is a catch-all for those that aren't neurotypical.
One thing that I thought was interesting that I don't think was definitively answered is that the guy on the beach repeatedly thinks that the voice in the mechano is robotic because of the nature of the technology. I'm assuming it was in some way distorted by the transmission, but I wonder if what he's interpreting as technological flat affect was in fact Annie's actual way of talking, and that if you put a gregarious guy like Uncle Mars in the mechano, something different would happen. We never learn for sure, but it's a nice bit.
And finally, on the nitpicks about why they can't/don't monitor the island through the mecchano--I think this story is a great example of how to handle that kind of "fridge logic" (the logical inconsistencies that people mostly don't notice while reading the story but think of later when looking in their fridge). The real reason, of course, is because the central conflict of the story is Annie's efforts to convey important information. If there was a technological way to convey that information, we wouldn't have a story. This story has a good way to sort of misdirect that nitpick while you're reading--the whole sound and fury about the cameras. It's a sleight-of-hand, but it tells you "look, reader, I've anticipated the question of why they don't have a visual feed and answered it." Sure, later when you pick it apart, it doesn't necessarily hold together. But that's not important (except for the fun of nitpicking--which I totally get!) because by then the story has already delivered its emotional payload. Without the cameras stuff, we might be spending time during the story thinking about why this all depends on an autistic girl in the first place and not get the punch of the story. I suppose I could copy-paste this paragraph to the nitpicky aspects of a lot of EP threads, but I thought it was particularly worth noting here because I thought this story did a good job of handling the fact that it is a bit tricky to contrive up the occasion for the story it wanted to tell.