Author Topic: EP749: Key Component  (Read 1405 times)

divs

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on: September 11, 2020, 09:16:15 PM
Escape Pod 749: Key Component

Author: T. R. Siebert
Narrator: Abra Staffin-Wiebe
Host: Mur Lafferty
Audio Producer: Adam Pracht

Escape Pod 749: Key Component is an Escape Pod original.

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The first thing you need to understand is that you don’t have a body. You are a body.

They pulled you from your mother, kicking and screaming, and you haven’t found silence since. You are too much.

Too much to handle, too much to hide. They tell you as much, with words and in a myriad of other ways. Too large to overlook, too obscene to see. You fold yourself into yourself and cannot escape the confines of it.

The ship wasn’t built for you like you were built for it. In most hallways you have duck to not hit your head on the ceiling. You avoid chairs with arm rests because you know you won’t fit. You haven’t slept comfortably in a bed since you were ten years old. Back then, you had nightmares in which you never stopped growing until you pushed against the hull of the ship, bursting through it into the never-ending void of space.

You move, and the world breaks around you.




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TrishEM

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Reply #1 on: September 12, 2020, 01:30:07 AM
I really loved the moods of this story: the compression and feeling out of place through so much of it, and the exultancy at the end where the protagonist feels freedom and bold movement at last. Yes, it also brings up some uneasy thoughts about designing children, but the societal need here is indeed huge, and the protagonist had a choice, although a lot of pressure with it. A lot to think about here, but ultimately satisfying.



CryptoMe

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Reply #2 on: April 26, 2021, 07:49:03 PM
I, too, felt the topic of designing children was very sensitively handled here. Which is why I don't understand why the MC was bullied and teased by other kids as a child. You would think that the society would revere any potential pilots, and would train their kids to behave accordingly.