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Escapeart. Episode 773. A Wild Patience. by Gwen Garfinkle. Part 2 of 3.

Hello and welcome to EscapePod, your weekly science fiction podcast. I'm Divya, your host for this episode.

This week we bring you part 2 of 3 of A Wild Patience by Gwen Garfinkle.

Gwen Garfinkle lives in Los Angeles. Her collection of short fiction and poetry, People Change, was published in 2018 by Aqueduct Press.

Her work has appeared in such publications as Uncanny, Strange Horizons, Apex, not one of us, Dreams and Nightmares, and the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

Her debut novel, Can't Find My Way Home, is forthcoming from Aqueduct Press.

Your narrator is New York Times best-selling author, Alitia Contas. Alitia is a princess, storm chaser and Saturday songwriter.

Author of over 20 books and 40 short stories. Alitia is the recipient of the Jane Jolene Midlist author grant, Describe Award, The Garden State Teen Book Award, and two-time winner of the Gillette Burgess Children's Book Award.

She has been twice nominated for both the Andre Norton Nebula and the Dragon Award. Alitia also narrates stories for multiple award-winning online magazines and contributes regular young adult book reviews to NPR.

Born in Vermont, she currently resides on the Space Coast of Florida with her teddy bear, Charlie.

In part 1, we discovered that our protagonist, stepmother, is actually a robot, as are many of the other mothers in their town.

Not only that, they've discovered feminism and a very literal strength that allows them to rebel against their original programming.

Now get ready to look at your mother in a whole new way, because it's storytelling.

A Wild Patience by Gwen Garfingle narrated by Alitia Contas.

Part 2

The next day, school was in an uproar. The other mothers had talked to their kids too.

Some kids were red-eyed and tear-streaked, others cynical with bravado. Jessica and Tom held hands every minute they were together, like they physically needed to.

Tom looked like he'd been crying. He was skinny and won, with long lashes and floppy dark hair. Jessica was bigger and taller than he was, but they fit each other somehow.

...