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Escape pod episode 1026 what Any Dead.

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Thing Wants by Amy Ogden Part 1 of 3.

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Hello and welcome to Escape Pod, your weekly science fiction podcast. I'm your host this week, Tina Connolly, and I'm here to bring you part one of what Any Dead Thing Wants by Amy Ogden this story first appeared in Psychopomp. Amy Ogden is an American werewolf in the Netherlands. What Annie Dead Thing Wants is her second Nebula finalist work. Her first was her debut novella Sun Daughters, Sea Daughters. Her other short fiction has previously appeared in publications such as Strange Horizons, Clark's World, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and her fantasy novella Starstruck recently came out from Psychopomp. She would make for a very annoying ghost. Your narrator this week is Isaac Harwood. Scientist by day, the evenings and weekends are for family, but Isaac still finds the time for plenty of tabletop RPGs and other such. Nerdy nonsense. Stories have always been a strong passion of Isaac's and bringing them to life with writing and voice acting is his privilege and honor. Your audio producer this week is Summer Brooks Content Notes in this story you will find some swearing as well as some destruction of galactic ecosystems. So get ready to meet some cabbage faced megafauna because it's story.

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What Any Dead Thing Wants by Amy Ogden Read by Isaac Harwood the third week of a planetary exorcism is the hardest, at least if the planet in question has megafauna to deal with. Enthusiasm wanes even faster on worlds that never evolved past microbes. Hobbs crew always comes in like a team of intrepid explorers, swapping stories with the outgoing terraforming crew as they run down the handover checklist. But after 10, 15 days, the work slows down as the crew moves farther from the terraforming origin nexus. That's where the ghosts are densest, the hauntings the most intense. Along the meridian lines that the crew follows around the planet to the secondary terraforming nexus, only the most stubborn haunts linger. The ones that won't clear out at just the first reminder of their own recent mortality. The ones that don't seem to give a shit that Hob and his crew are working to a strict deadline. Exo megafauna have, unsurprisingly, absolutely no sense of human decency. And of course, Hob as team captain gets stuck with the stubbornest beasties of all. Got one. Shouts Maisley over the command, and Hob winces. They're obliged to wear suits out here along the meridian where the vestiges of the pre transformed world remain, albeit with open visors to let them breathe the brand new formaturgically generated human friendly atmosphere. Still, Misley yells through the grove of old growth trees to Hob instead of talking to the suitcom that's right next to his twice damned mouth. It's another one of these cabbage face motherfuckers. Shit, thinks Hob, but he keeps that unhelpful thought to himself. They're running behind on this job as it is, and the last thing anyone needs is to suspect the boss is cracking under the pressure. Got it, Maze. Flag it and keep moving. I'll take a look. He moves off in the direction of Mzli's map marker as soon as it drops into his visual overlay. Soon he's forced to leave behind the yellow white light of the G3 type star that wanders bloatedly across the sky in favor of the shade of a grove of trees. The grove is unusually quiet, only a few brave birds gossiping back and forth, the vanguard of earthly fauna seeded here by the skilled thaumaturgists on the terraforming team. Usually there are more of them, little mammals too, whose species Hob can't remember, flitting from tree to tree and chattering irritably and shaking the branches. Most of them make themselves scarce when a haunt passes through, though the grove has a certain sameness that bothers him. The regularity of the placement, the symmetry of the branches. It looks like the terraforming team took a basic flora incantation and rubber stamped it all over the area without the least effort to differentiate one tree from the next. He lifts a hand and half heartedly taps into the source. It's all the same source, whether you're creating life or banishing it. And it's not like the process audits are going to catch a little unauthorized application of thaumaturgy. Tongue between his teeth, Hob concentrates on a minor incantation growth threaded through with an urge toward chaos. After a moment, new branches unfurl, new leaves mutter in the wind. Probably no one but Hob would notice the way that the edge has been taken off the grove's unnatural conformity. But it's the principle of the thing. Principles, right? Such as perhaps doing the job you're getting paid to do and handling yet another CFM haunt. Stubborn ass beasties. The survey crew that preceded the terraforming event would have documented this flavour of megafauna, collected and stored a few representative specimens at one affiliated research institution or another. You never know, after all, if the resident microbial mat of planet terraformed out of existence produces the miracle molecule that'll cure blister lung or metabolize bionatroline faster than it can accumulate in topsoil or whatever. At some point, the researchers will assign the species a proper scientific name. As far as the Exorcist crew is concerned, though, they're just cabbaged face motherfuckers, or CFMs, when they're feeling lazy. Cabbage faced motherfucker is somewhat euphemistic, though nothing about them even vaguely suggests what humans would think of as a face. The globular organs, appended at irregular intervals along their fat toroid bodies, do, however, write cabbage in bold font. Hob doesn't spot the CFM in question, but he does find tracks in the soil and and some deep scratches in the bark of a tree near Mzli's marker. Ghosts experiencing intense responses anger, fear, confusion can exert some influence on objects in their environment. Responses like that can be enough to trigger acceptance or understanding at whatever level Exolife can comprehend. Oh gosh, would you look at that. I'm a dead cabbage face motherfucker. It's a good sign and a bad one. Acceptance is the only way to permanently clear a haunt. On the other hand, Hob himself very much counts as an object in the environment. The terraforming team has already been through wiping away poisonous atmosphere and clouds of unfriendly microbes, but there's still a reason he wears this protective suit. The tracks peter out a few meters deeper into the trees. Hob doesn't see any movement beyond the wind rifling through the leaves overhead. His ocular overlay tells him these trees are chestnuts. Not a single glimmer of ghost light. He takes some time to explore outward from the marker, but he doesn't find any more tracks, nor any further damage to the grove. His educated guess is that there's only one CFM left in this area. Pair bonded fauna are more likely to wind up in a cohort situation anyway, and according to the info in the Survey Team Compendium, CFMs exhibited mostly solitary behaviour outside of a prolonged parental care stage for newly hatched spawn. It's enough recon for now. He doesn't have time today to set up the incantations that a full megafauna exorcism will demand. He adds notes to the marker and trudges on in the direction the rest of the group has moved. A black and white bird scolds him noisily as he walks faster, feeling appropriately chastened. This sector isn't going to clear itself after all. After a few dull but productive hours of exercising alien microorganisms, Hob is ready to call it a day. Microorganisms are so easy. Show a microbe a substrate it can sense but not digest, and it's immediate game over. Like its only job is eating and reproducing. Take that away and bam. It's not as if a single celled wannabe bacteria have a lot to live for. He's the last member of the team to report back to the modular habitat that they currently call home. The others have been trudging in on foot or trundling up in their fleet of transports for the past hour. There's no airlock, not like on terraforming dome habitats, so before Hob can even step inside, he can hear Maisli and Yetall in the mess arguing over whose turn it is to prep dinner. It's Yettle's turn. Hob shouts, tossing his helmet ahead of him into the locker room. It's on the goddamn duty roster, Jetts. Does it have to go down like this? Every single rotation? Then of course they mob him by the suit lockers because Yettle has to lay out her whole rationale. Something about swapping turns on transport maintenance last rotation. Although it's hard to follow her logic when Mzli interrupts every other word, Hob absolutely cannot muster up a single shit to give, but Mzli and Yetall are so occupied with each other they don't seem to notice. They both jump when Jaara's voice booms out behind them. So does Hob, for that matter, but he doesn't think they notice. Flip a fucking coin or something, you two. Jaara barks. You. Your petty squabbles are not Hob's problem. She produces a tablet with an icrossing spreadsheet arrayed across the screen as Yettle and Mzli retreat to the margins of the locker room. Can I borrow you for a moment, boss? Yeah, of course. He glances at Maisli and Yettle and turns his shoulder toward them to hang up his suit. It's not that he's trying to be dismissive, it's just that they're being annoying as all hell. See you both at dinner in a few. Once they've slunk away, he takes the tablet from Jara and flicks two fingers over the screen, zooming out to a less migraine inducing resolution. It's not like he needs to read the actual numbers to know where they stand. J' Ara lives for color coding and the spreadsheet is a screaming eyesore of yellow, orange, and pink. None of our metrics are in the red yet. That's something. It might be something if this was a routine colonisation. J' Ara shoves her hair out of her face for a better view of the tablet, as if she doesn't have every row and column committed to memory. She had grey hairs before this particular job, but they've gotten more noticeable silver spangles and the undergrowth of her severe side shave. Zatharin's days are numbered. If this place isn't cleared in time, it'll be cleared almost unconsciously. Hob pulls up the most recent news pull in his visual sidebar, and scrolls to coverage of the poor, doomed planet in question. The exact nature of the thaumaturgical experiment that disturbed Zatharan's orbit escapes him, partly because orbital astrology isn't his field, and partly because the official reports have been purposely vague so that no one else can attempt the devastating effort to modify a planet's orbit. But any layman could interpret the effects of temperatures are dropping, crops are failing, energy sources can't keep up with the increased demand for light and heat. Zatharan is a dead planet, spinning. Hob has to clean up Zatharin too, well enough that a review team deems it safe for human habitation. We can always jump ahead to the secondary nexus if we need to and backtrack. Sure. Jara takes the tablet back and glares at it. If you could change metrics by sheer force of will, they'd be comfortably in the green by now. The company loves it when we deviate from process. Could be worse. He nods toward the door and toward the smell of questionably prepared meal mix. You worked the Car Decker job, didn't you? A notoriously messy terraformation. She winces, acknowledging the hit, and follows him to the mess. It's barely big enough for all of them, 12 chairs packed around a pair of flimsy tables in a square that's two metres on a side at most, a daily appetizer course of jostled elbows and accidental footsies. Hob and Jaara squeeze into the last two empty seats, a small bastion of quiet amid the chaos. They both abstain from the traditional mockery of Yettle and Mzli's culinary Hob because he's the boss, J' Ara because she's Jara. Looks good, he says diplomatically when Mzli unloads a trail of meal mix portions in front of him. Mzli rolls his eyes so Hob adds, better than it smells. Anyway, what's the point of being the boss, really, if you can't get a good one in now and then? It's the third night in a row eating the same variety of meal mix. Someone did a shit job setting up the supply cabinets before takeoff, and Hobbs suspects it may have been him, and he tucks in without enthusiasm. Before he gets past the first bite, though, someone's standing over him. It's Rathorna, his hair wet from the showers. Uh, says Rathorna, looking over the full mess. Who the fuck is in my seat? Whatever routine joviality had been on hand in the mess. It falls away now. Hob's gaze rivets to the seat wedged into the far corner, to the guy in the nondescript jumpsuit whose braided back black hair and beaky nose bear only superficial resemblance to Rathaunas. Hi, says the stranger apologetically. Sorry for showing up uninvited. Embarrassed under the sudden flood of attention, he goes to nudge the spoon sitting in the portion of meal mix in front of him, but his hand passes straight through. But I think I'm dead. Nothing in process covers what to do if a dead human being was waltzes into your exorcism site. Because why the fuck would it? Still, he waits for a reply from hq. On the subspace comm. Hob leaves J' ara to manage the rest of the crew and spends an hour searching and double checking the handbook. No one terraforms a world already inhabited by humans. That's the whole point of terraforming. The ghost who has followed him to his quarters watches with interest while Hob panic scrolls. What are you looking at? He asks, inspecting the various jumpsuits and socks and underwear crammed into Hob's cubby. He speaks standard spanglerin with the fluidity of long practice, and Hob can't place his accent from its crisp plosives and not quite suppressed uvular trill. There are as many human languages as there are settled worlds. Quite a lot more than that, actually, and trying to nail one down without a few more clues is a loser's game. If you're reading to relax, I don't think it's working. Hob pages into the part that covers the reasons that a process investigator might be required, then skips ahead to the next section marker. I'm not reading to relax, okay? The ghost cranes his neck to look at the handbook over Hobbs shoulder. Maybe you should try that then the tablet chimes and Hobbs swipes away the handbook to read the message from HQ no salutation, no advice, no assigned process investigator. Not yet, at least. Additional information requested before proceeding. Is the Haunt a deceased terraformer? When Hob looks up from the tablet, the Ghost is studying Hob's private stash where it protrudes from the bottom of his cubby. Are those Ajali butter sweets? He asks with interest. It's a small mercy that Hob's pornography collection is tucked away under a layer of emergency snacks. Damn, I haven't had one in years. Help yourself, says Hob, a pathetic effort at exorcism, really, and one that only earns him an unimpressed look from the Ghost. Sorry, I have to ask. Were you one of the terraformers assigned here? The Ghost's face scrunches thoughtfully as he plants himself next to Hob on the bunk. What answer are you hoping to hear? No, I think. Oh, a shrug. That's too bad. I was Hobbs squints. Okay, explain how to calculate the optimal number of meridians for full planetary coverage. The Ghost makes a deflating noise. That's not fair, he complains. I didn't know you were a terraformer. Isn't this an exorcist crew? It is. And I'm not anymore. Hob keys into his tablet. Haunt is not an exorcist. Before sending this fragment of information, he glances sideways at the Ghost's implacable face. How did you get here, then, if you're not a terraformer? I crashed. A ghostly finger gestures at the tablet. Pretty sure that's also how I died, if that's helpful for your bosses to know. The Company wouldn't have authorized any other spacecraft to be in this system until the terraformation was done. Oh no. By all the thousand gods of our ancient home, says the Ghost without the least inflection, I would hate to think I'd die doing something the Company hadn't authorized. And he flickers out like a tablet screen gone dark. Hob adds to his message. Victim of crash craft, origin currently unknown. Please advise. Staring at the subspace comm does not, unfortunately, make the messages travel any faster, nor does it make them any more helpful when they finally do arrive. Unauthorized entry is a forfeiture of legal standing in system. Continue with exorcism as planned. Hob would continue staring at the delivered instructions, hoping his tired eyes were playing tricks on him, but he's all stared out. He keys in a few simple requests to the system while he's here. Basic boss guy shit. Running a projection for sector clearance time. Sending out a couple of Recon drones. Then, tablet in hand, he wanders back to the mess where only J' Ara remains watching the doorway. If he hadn't expected her to be here waiting for him with the whole Process handbook behind her eyes, he would already be melting down. In a boss like fashion, of course. But J' Ara will know what to do. Which process investigator are they sending? She asks as he hesitates in the doorway. The meal mix in front of her has been cut into precise quarters, exactly three of which have been eaten. None of them. Hob shrugs somewhat more pathetically than behooves the lead exorcism specialist on this assignment. The higher ups are saying that this doesn't change anything. Continue with exorcism as planned. He waits for her to remind him that that's crazy, that's ridiculous, because they both know it is. No one here signed up to exorcise a human being. Certainly no one has trained for that kind of thing. There should be process for this. There should be someone coming in to look into how a random guy not only ended up on a world mid exorcism, but ended up there as a corpse. If Jara can just look him in the eye and say in her own way, what the fuck, Hob? We can't just exorcise a whole person. He'll turn around and get back on the subspace comm and demand someone he doesn't care who do something, he doesn't care what, to figure out what happened here. And if she added this flies in the face of process, page 103, paragraph 4, line E, that would help a lot too. But Jara doesn't quote Process at him. Okay, she says, which is not what she's supposed to say because she's supposed to be better than Hob, and not just at process. So who's going to handle the dead guy? Well, says the dead guy himself from behind Hob, I like to think I'm pretty self sufficient. Exhaustion does Hob the small favour of suppressing his startle reflex. I've got to take care of that cabbage face motherfucker. Wow. The dead guy makes an aggravated noise in his throat. My name is Ozzie, not that any of you asked, so I can handle our new friend here too, while I stay on sight. No reason for the rest of you to hang behind. We're cutting the margins close enough as it is. If he didn't know Ja' Ara as well as he did, he might have missed the minute relaxation of the lines on her face. You're in charge of the others till I catch back up. Okay, boss. What J' ara means is no shit, boss. Imagine Mzli taking the lead. The rest of her meal mix disappears into her mouth in 1, 2, 3 bites before she clears out of the mess. With her empty tray in hand, she adds, good luck, nice to meet you, calls the dead guy Ozzie. That is, assuming he's been more truthful about his name than about his work history before throwing his translucent hands in the air. Oh damn, I didn't ask for her name either. Or yours, because I'm definitely not calling you boss. The next sector scheduled for clearance the next 70 miles along the Meridian is still accessible from the modular habitat, so it stays behind for now. When the crew leaves Hob behind, he waves the truck fleet off before setting out on foot toward the chestnut grove. No sign of their new pal Ozzie yet. Today Hob woke once in the middle of the night certain he would find a ghost like bright body looming over him. But his compartment had been empty except for himself and the nearly corporeal scent of some unwashed socks. Exorcising exo life has never been a cushy gig, but at least he didn't use to worry about a horn following him home. Without the human ghost on hand, he has some time to deal with the CFM problem. He takes his compendium out of his padded pocket and flicks the stylus over the screen. A catalogued list scrolls past flora and fauna of all kinds, filtered and sorted by their current location, the fruits of the survey team's new labours, and the fodder for Hobbs Job. Now previous interactions with the CFMs have shown them to be a scavenger species, which simplifies his task. Now he selects a thumbnail of a different species of megafauna from the compendium, studies it for a moment and steps back. The illusion that he generates looks just like the picture in the compendium. He hasn't bothered to modify it from the base model. It's sort of crescent shaped, the hump on its back reaching higher than its shoulder. Its lacquered looking scales catch and refract the meager light under the chestnut canopy, with hundreds of small knobby leaf protrusions poking up in between. The crew calls these things battle slugs, probably because gamiferous sprout faced motherfuckers is too much of a mouthful. Also, no one but Hob knows that gommiferous refers to sprouts, which are sort of like miniature cabbages. And Hob only knows because he specially sent a data request on the out of system relay. That's what dedication to one's craft looks like, baby. No reason to take the time to animate shallow trembles on the leafy knobs or a ripple over the shiny scales. That sort of artistry is wasted on a CFM that would have eaten dead prey just as happily as live. It looks like a dead battle slug. It smells like one, or as close to one as he can make it based on the chemical signatures noted in the compendium. That's going to have to be good enough. There'd been a time where Hob wouldn't have illusioned up a single blade of grass without that kind of eye to detail. That time ended roughly somewhere between earning his certificate in technical thaumaturgy and his first day on an exorcism campaign. Come and get it, he calls on the breathtakingly small chant that a the CFM's cabbagey sense organs are tuned to the frequency range of human speech and b it understands a language resembling standard spanglorin. He feels like he has to say something when he attempts an exorcism and he can't think of anything with the right amount of gravitas right now. A few of the chestnut trees have low slung branches that let him get a foothold and climb higher even in the cumbersome suit. Some terraformer's idea of a playground for kids from the settlement plan for nearby, maybe. Either way, he's clear by the time the CFM comes snuffling, waffling along a lumpy yellow donut wriggling in wide sweeping arcs around the grove as it centres in on Hob and his illusion. There are haunts with less efficient movement patterns, but there sure aren't many. It's probably just as well he didn't spend much time on the details because the cabbage faced motherfucker's cabbages don't appear to be feeding it much in the way of visual data. It rotates ungracefully through the trunks of several trees as if they aren't even there. Stupid CFM doesn't know it's the only thing that isn't even there. Only when it approaches the make believe battle slug corpse does it pause in its ineffectively circuitous route to investigate. A few cabbages unfurl, the leafy appendages on the outside, slackening and pulsing unpleasantly as it tastes the air. It must like what it finds because the skirt like flaps at the bottom of its toroid lift and it tries to envelop the battle slug in its prehensile stomach. It doesn't work, of course. That's the whole point of the exercise. The CFM vibrates in distress, a painfully high pitched frequency that Hob's suit quickly blocks. It knocks around a few times, rebounding off tree trunks as it gropes for the delectable dinner that remains outside its reach. It's mad enough to become corporeal. That's promising. Come on, Hob urges silently as he watches its hide flush green and orange in a patchy, bruised looking pattern. Figure it out and go to haunt hell already. That's the first exo I've ever seen in person, says Ozzie. Hob leans back, looking for the ghost. Sure enough, telltale ghost light surrounds a human shape on the branch above him, but as he swings his head around, he overbalances himself. Gravity's hand seizes him by the collar and gives him a good yank. His grasping fingers strip slender chestnut branches of their leaves as they slide through his fingers, and then he's in the air. The fall is shockingly brief. His shoulders bounce off a solid branch and he hits the ground on all fours, right on the spot where his own illusion is even now dissipating. As his concentration fragments. The CFM shrieks in outrage, its toroid rippling in circular waves. Although it's not intelligent enough to recognise Hob as the architect of its untouchable meal, it's not so brainless that it can't at least spot a convenient target for its current rage. It whips around into Hob, sending him flying. Branches break. Unless those snapping sounds are bones as he crashes face first into a stand of younger chestnuts. Dazed, he thrashes around for a weapon, a hiding place, a tree that's climbable in his current state. But the CFM is already on top of him, cabbages pulsing. Its stomach peeks out of its maw, then retracts back in. Hob must not smell like dinner. With one last squeal of its ear piercing disdain, it turns and slinks off into the trees. Oh my God. Oh my God. The shape that looms in his vision sheds more light than it blocks. When Hob's vision clears, the shape resolves into Ozzie's shocked face. His eyes glitter with more than ghost light. Hob wonders if a haunt can cry real tears. Are you okay? What can I do? I can go find the others. Fuck, says Hob, more as punctuation than a response to the fall. Exorcism is rarely as easy as that anyway. He gets up off the ground, carefully, checking for injuries. Bruises, minor cuts, scraped knees. His left wrist is sore, but not, he thinks, broken or sprained. He dusts off his suit. I guess there's a reason they make us wear these things. I'm so sorry. Ozzie hovers a short distance away, within arm's reach. If his arms could actually reach anything. I'm not happier about the situation than you are. Probably less, but. But I wasn't trying to get you killed. Well, you didn't, so no harm done. Reaching for his compendium pocket, Hob's wrist twists unpleasantly and he winces. Not much harm done. At least the compendium landed in better shape than he did. The last thing Hob needs is to have replacement equipment fees levied against his paycheck. While he flicks up and down the entries related to CFMs, Ozzie peers over his shoulder. I didn't know they could still do things, he says and gestures vaguely with both hands, flexing his fingers. Touch things? Mostly. They can't. Only when they're experiencing strong emotional activation. Hob chews on his tongue, lingering over the entry on CFM mating behaviors. His next attempt at exorcising the Exo haunt will require a little more effort than a half assed illusion of dinner. A swathe of ghostlight cuts between him and the compendium. Hya. Yells Ozzie, then steps back shamefacedly when his arm passes harmlessly through Hob's hand. Okay, sure. Stronger emotional activation than that. Got it. You're new at this exorcism thing. Hob jams his compendium back into his pocket, making sure the zip padded pouch closed around it. You'll get the hang of it. Can't wait, though. Ozzie says it with the cadence of a joke. A frown flits over his face before he yanks a lopsided grin back into place. Got as much time as I need to improve now. Maybe knowing a little more about process will help shuffle things along. Or maybe it'll just get in the way. Hob creates a mental compendium entry for his human Haunt and starts entering data. 30 to 40 years old at time of death. Occupation unknown. Business in system unknown. Doesn't like the idea of exorcism. Got upset when he thought he'd harmed a human being. Me. With that limited data entered, he makes a decision. The emotional activation is the key. It sounds almost like a confession. A conciliatory gesture grudgingly offered. That's what lets a haunt finally break through to acceptance. Before Ozzy can verbally process that, OB adds, I'm done out here today. He jerks one shoulder in the direction of the modular habitat. You coming back to base with me? He doesn't have a plan yet on how to get Ozzy out of here? Not yet, but he has a plan on how to make a plan. When Ozzie hesitates, Hob shrugs his understanding and sets off on his own. But as soon as he starts moving, Ozzy calls after him. Fine, but only because you're a better conversationalist than that xo. When Hob looks over his shoulder, Ozzie drifts in his wake, slipping through shadows and tree trunks with equal ease. The name Cabbage Faced Motherfucker makes a lot more sense now. By.