Escape Pod 823: Build-A-Body

Escape Pod

Escape Artists Foundation

Fiction, Science Fiction, Drama

4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2022

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Build-A-Body By Avi Burton When I was eighteen, I ordered a body off the internet. It was actually kind of easy. I was old enough to remember when the first successful human transfer was performed— the consciousness of a paralyzed young man was dropped into a lab-grown body, appropriately nicknamed ‘Adam’. Scientists thought it would change the world. Politicians and preachers thought it would end the world. For a while, every pundit and their mother were convinced that we’d be walking around with chips in our brains, swapping bodies left and right. But as it turned out (as it almost always turns out), the reality was much more mundane. Full-body transference was limited to extreme medical cases and the occasional desperate celebrity. The world’s governments stuck enough red tape on it to dye the whole operation a bloody mess, and most people left well enough alone. Theoretically, for transgender people with severe dysphoria, full-body transference was an option. There was a waitlist and everything. I’d been on it for eighteen months, trying to get a consultation. With my day job at the DMV, I was intimately familiar with the aching slog of bureaucracy, and had long since given up on making progress with transitioning, full-body or not.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Escape pod Episode 823 Build the body by Avi Burton
0:30.0	Hello and welcome to Escape pod, your weekly science fiction podcast. I'm your host this week,
0:46.4	Tina Connolly, and I'm here to bring you Build a Body by Avi Burton. This story is original
0:54.0	to escape pod. Avi Burton is an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, where they're
1:01.3	studying creative writing and theatre. When not writing, he can be found fencing, obsessing over
1:07.2	classic literature, or talking to his cat. Find them on Twitter at Avi underscore why.
1:16.6	Your narrator this week is Derusha Weim. M Derusha Weim is the Nebula Award nominated and
1:22.0	Sir Julius Vogel Award-winning author of the Interactive Fiction Game, The Martian Job,
1:27.3	as well as 13 novels, several poems, and many short stories. Originally from Canada,
1:33.0	Derusha lives in Wellington, New Zealand, after spending several years sailing the Pacific.
1:38.4	They tweet at Derusha and their website is derusha.ca.
1:45.1	Your audio producer this week is Adam Perott.
1:48.1	This story has a content notification for gender dysphoria and depersonalization.
1:55.4	So get ready to click the mysterious ad, because it's story time.
2:07.1	Build a Body by Avi Burton. When I was 18, I ordered a body off the internet. It was actually
2:14.3	the kind of easy. I was old enough to remember when the first successful human transfer was
2:19.2	performed. The consciousness of a paralyzed young man was dropped into a lab-grown body,
2:24.3	appropriately nicknamed Adam. Scientists thought it would change the world. Politicians
2:29.9	and preachers thought it would end the world. For a while, every pundit and their mother were
2:35.1	convinced that we'd be walking around with chips in our brains, swapping bodies left and right.
2:40.3	But as it turned out, as it almost always turns out, the reality was much more mundane.
2:46.9	Full body transference was limited to extreme medical cases and the occasional desperate celebrity.
	...

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