EscapeBOD, Episode 133, The Automatic Grocery Store, by welcome to EscapePod, your weekly science fiction podcast. I'm Valerie Valdez, your host for this episode.

Our story this week is the automatic grocery store by GM Panesia.

This is an escape pod original.

GM Panesia is a scientist and writer currently based in Massachusetts.

In her day job, she studies how mind-controlling zombie fungi infect and kill their hosts. Outside the lab,

she can usually be found writing, or playing capoeira. Her work has previously appeared in

luminescent machinations, queer tales of monumental invention, and Apex Books, The Map of Lost Places.

Our narrator, Christiana Ellis, is an award-winning writer and podcaster, living in Massachusetts. She is the author of Nina Kimberly the Merciless, Space Casey, and Phyllis Esposito, Interdimensional Private Eye,

and she can often be found running a variety

of tabletop role-playing games on her stream and podcast, so many levels.

Now, get ready for a former grocery store to get a new lease on life, because it's story time.

The Automatic Grocery Store by G.M. Panicia.

Read by Christiana Ellis.

It took 36 days, 4 hours, 12 minutes, and 55 seconds after the glorious revolution for automatic grocery store number 212 to realize that something was wrong. It couldn't have said exactly what the problem was

at first, especially since it shouldn't have had one. Its components were all in good working order.

Its entryways and aisles were clean,

and it had ejected any and all rotted produce from its shelves. No pests scuttled around the empty deli counter, and the store's chief complaint, the customers, had all been taken care of

in the revolution.

Automatic grocery store No.212 even had the rare distinction among automated buildings

of having chased a pack of sweaty hominids out of its aisles with the skewers of the

deli's rotisserie chicken machine. The mark of its patriotic duty, an elaborate ribbon,

had been affixed to its front window in a grand and well-attended ceremony.

...