Pseudopod 047: Akropolis

[Bdoomed]

Pseudopod 047: Akropolis


By Matt Wallace
Read by Phil Rossi

Danneth is thirty-six and he still dreams of it. Five of them entered
the Akropolis that night. It should’ve been hot, but the stone was
cold when they touched it. They wandered the empty city for hours
before finally making the trek up the long, steep steps. They made
their way to the highest chamber, a fortified structure surrounded by
battlements crowned with twisted, unrecognizable shapes. It was empty,
too. They found a room with veined walls, lines thick and twisting
like petrified kudzu. The strange runes that they would come to know
as runati surrounded the throne-like chair with its stone skull cap,
the dome designed to open heads and burn the runati into brains.

Somehow it spoke to Danneth’s father. What it later took the
scientists months to begin to decipher, the old man knew that first
night. But he let them fumble with it, allowed them to study it, to
begin to expose it to the world. He let them believe he was a simple
farmer just happy to have made first contact with such a discovery.
And when the time came that their inept ministrations were of no more
use, he, the simple farmer, ejected the government from the Akropolis.


Listen to this week's Pseudopod.

[Leon Kensington]

I have a theory:

Matt Wallace sold movie rights to this instead of Failed Cities and now we have Cloverfield!


All around great story, good job Matt.

[Bdoomed]

I kept thinking of an old Japanese anime titled "Akira".  If you haven't seen it, see it, its good.
Interesting way to invade a planet!  Its definately more enticing and horrifying than a War of the Worlds, mundane type of invasion (haha a mundane invasion...).

[oddpod]

nice, i like my cuthulu-mithos flavoed goodnes and this twist was fab

good to hear someone on my side of the pond is geting in on the act also

[eytanz]

Overall, a good story. I felt that the mixed up chronology didn't add much, and could have been dispensed with. But it didn't really do much harm, either.

[Jim]

I totally dug this one.

This had quite a bit of what I like in an SF horror story.

[Leon Kensington]

But, was this SF or Fantasy, it has magic which is fantasy (at least in my mind) but it has an SF feel which I can't quite place.

[eytanz]

Well, it had magic of the "sufficiently advanced technology" variety - there was some technobable explanation about "dormant parts of the brain" and energy manipulation, that the modified humans just thought of as "spells" because they didn't care about the details.

It's sort of the kind of pseduo-science that they use on Star Trek. Whether such totally unrealistic technology makes for SF or fantasy is a different question, and not one I find particularly interesting.

[Monty Grue]

Overall, I liked it, more or less, but it really had too much fantasy and magic to feel like a horror story.  Magic seldome works well in horror.   It was a bit too far fetched to evoke a mood of fear, terror, or tension in this story.  I guess a simpler way to say it would be “You put fantasy in my horror” and the is not really a good thing

[Leon Kensington]

“You put fantasy in my horror” and that is not really a good thing

Why not?  Are not L.K. Hamiliton's books that, and to some extent the Dresden Files.  Even Lovecraft is that way for some of his stories.

[darusha]

...it really had too much fantasy and magic to feel like a horror story.

This is so interesting to me.  One of the things I really liked about this story is that is was so clear (to me, anyway) that the "magic" was technology that humans just didn't have the capacity to understand.  So it was given terms we could understand, like "spells."  To me, that is the opposite of fantasy - it explains something that seems supernatural in terms that are not supernatural at all.

As for the plausibility of the technology - well, that's another discussion entirely.

[Thaurismunths]

Yeay! They finally got Phil to read a story on here. Or Phil finally got to read one, either way I've been waiting for that since I found the Crescent Vignettes!
As a fanboy plug, I highly recommend listening to his Crescent Station podcast if you're in to space SF.

Fun story, all the way around!
Thanks gang!

[goatkeeper]

GREAT STORY

I'm still digging everything Matt Wallace writes

[BrandtPileggi]

GREAT STORY

I'm still digging everything Matt Wallace writes

Seconded. No time for eloquence. The Simpsons Movie is out. Loved the story and it's perfect breasts.

[Listener]

This was my first PP listen, and I quite enjoyed the story.  I agree with eytanz... the chronology shifts didn't really add much to the story, but then, I think they existed to break up what might have been a more boring flow.  Stories that take place over a long period of years, I feel, can sometimes be a little blah.

One wonders what the acropoleans would do as servants to whatever race created them.

I liked the reading -- the reader's voice had the heavy finality that was needed for a story like this.  If anything I felt he was a little too dispassionate at times, but then, the acropoleans were fairly dispassionate. Or, at least, Daneth seemed to be.

I also agree that this may not necessarily have been 'classic' horror, but elements were horror-ific enough.  It did feel more like SF to me -- though perhaps as the printed word it was more horror-ific.  Still, if it appeared in a horror publication, it's horror enough for me not to complain.

A good introduction to Pseudopod.

(PS: using horror-ific instead of horrific on purpose.)

[Roney]

A really chilling story.  Seems like a lazy way for aliens with that much power to arrange an invasion, but there's no point doing for yourself what you can entice some other sucker to do for you.

[Leon Kensington]

A really chilling story.  Seems like a lazy way for aliens with that much power to arrange an invasion, but there's no point doing for yourself what you can entice some other sucker to do for you.

Not really, it's actually pretty smart.  Allow humanity to kill itself then you take control.  Brillant.

[Russell Nash]

A really chilling story.  Seems like a lazy way for aliens with that much power to arrange an invasion, but there's no point doing for yourself what you can entice some other sucker to do for you.

Not really, it's actually pretty smart.  Allow humanity to kill itself then you take control.  Brillant.

I also think it was a fairly smooth plan.  If you're a truly superior race, why show up before the place is subjugated?  Why waste your time or possibly put yourself at risk?  Even humans get a lucky hit in now and then.

[wakela]

I'm surprised there is so much poisitive feedback for this story.  It reminded me of the D&D characters we would think up in fourth grade.  We were so obsessed with their badassery that we didn't realize that the game is about drama and tension and taking risks.  The fall of humanity felt inevitable, but I still had to sit through all these details of its destruction.  The story felt like one, long exposition.  I admit that I didn't predict the ending, but it wasn't particularly shocking, either. 

[robertmarkbram]

It reminded me of the D&D characters we would think up in fourth grade.  We were so obsessed with their badassery that we didn't realize that the game is about drama and tension and taking risks.

Fantastic story! What I appreciated most was the implied understanding of .. some deeper purpose that the protagonist's action were shaped by. Even though they were like Wakela's D&D characters (how badly I hated starting a campaign at FIRST level!), the protagonist was different somehow. It was never explained why, but he always seemed to hold back.

The ending was great - we weren't born to rule.. we were born to serve, and here they come! This left the most delicious question in my mind - just what was going to happen next?

[Unblinking]

This was a really interesting idea, the sending of an automated city to subjugate a race as a precursor to invasion, but I wouldn't really call this a story.  It had no arc.  The protagonist had no obstacles to his goals.  What he wanted, he took, and aside from the occasional quibble with his fellows, and the loss of his humanity (which didn't really seem to bother him), nothing really stood in his way.

I really really liked the ideas held within, and that kept me listening to the end, but it was all just an explanation of a setting, not a story.

[Millenium_King]

I liked this one.  It held my interest and managed to tell a "Metamorphosis of the World"-type story without being dull or too high-level.  If I have any complaints, they are...

1. The beginning was told somewhat out of sequence.  I felt this unecessary and confusing.  There is nothing wrong with taking a massive event like this and laying it out in linear fashion (cf. "The Metamorphosis of the World" , "The Coming of the White Worm" et al).

2. I never really got a feel for the city or its inhuman inhabitants.  R'lyeh felt real, felt terrifying, felt inhuman - this place just felt... well, I don't even know.  Big?  Big perhaps, but never horrific as a place.  (cf. "The Black Stone" for just how terrible a huge, black castle can be).

3. Saw the ending coming.  Big time.

Still, I did enjoy it quite a bit... although, I must remind everyone, that I am a total sucker for monstrous edifices and architecture.

EDIT: Great point by Unblinking, and one I will echo - this had no arc.  I couldn't put my finger on it until I read his comments.  That is probably what bugged me most about this story.

I also wanted to mention that the MC's wife with her "perfect breasts" felt superfluous.  Never even had a line.