Escape pod. Episode 893. A series of endings.

I'm on sing.

Hello and welcome to Escape pod, your weekly science fiction podcast. I'm Valerie Valdez, your host for this episode.

Our story this week is a series of endings by Amal Sing. This story originally appeared in Clarks World magazine in December 2021.

Amal Sing is an author and screenwriter from Mumbai, India. His short fiction has appeared in venues such as Clarks World and Apex, FNSF, Fantasy, among others.

He also co-edits Tassivore, a short fiction magazine aimed at uplifting new voices in South Asian speculative fiction.

Our narrator, Kashik Narasiman, is a management consultant by day, writer by night, and psycho-not every weekend. He tweets at Casaroth.

Now get ready to experience a fascinating, fragmented existence across Earth and far beyond, because it's story time.

A series of endings by Amal Sing. This is the story of Rupchandrathor, time traveler, fighter, poet, cancer survivor, inventor.

While his story has many endings, there's only one true beginning, and it takes place in the humid, but pristine backwaters of sun-drenched Kerala.

A scene from a movie by the Trute Roots, hand on heart, scene of value, scene of promise, scene of birth.

A child's cry from inside attached hut. Outside the hut, a muddy trail that disappears amid a canopy of palm trees.

A silent rush of water from a nearby canal. A rickety boat tied to the thick stem of a drooping coconut tree that looks like a sullen traveler whose hair is in disarray.

The child is born to parents who aren't true keralites by birth, but by heart. His face is like the moon. His mother insists on naming him Chandru, but his father calls him Rup. By consensus, he's named Rupchandr.

He will be a painter like his grandfather, says Rupchandr's father, Karamchand, upon seeing his eyes bright and black and full of promise.

Rupchand cools at this, clutching his father's pudji finger. His father mumbles a song's mukhara under his breath, but is rudely interrupted by his mother, Purnakala.

No, says Purnakala. He will be a healer. Rupchand lets out a veil at this, making his dissatisfaction known.

Maybe one day, he will become a boat racer. Like his father, Rupchandr's veil turns into a steady baby hum.

He will be none of those things his parents just spoke about. This is his one true beginning.

Rupchandr athor hurdles towards Europa. Inside the breath pod, disconnected from the Marinette 5 ship, Jupiter bound, but wrecked after crossing Mars,

the only thing to keep him company is the constant drone of his pod's AI unit, whose two tasks are reminding him of his rapidly depleting oxygen and reciting him poems.

Its Urdu is heavily accented, but workable. RR can't complain. The vastness of space is its own poetry.

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