Escape Pod 909: Murder or a Duck (Flashback Friday)

Escape Pod

Escape Artists Foundation

Fiction, Science Fiction, Drama

4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2023

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Murder or a Duck By Beth Goder George called out, “Mrs. Whitman, you have a visitor.” Mrs. Whitman strode from her workroom, her white hair skipping out of its hairpins. She straightened her work skirt, massaged her bad knee, then hurried down the hall. “George, what’s happened to the lamp with the blue shade?” “To which lamp are you referring?” George smoothed down a cravat embroidered with tiny trombones. Improper attire for a butler, but George had never been entirely proper. Mrs. Whitman examined the sitting room in further depth. The blue lamp was gone, as were the doilies, thank goodness. An elegant table sat between the armchair and green sofa, which was infused with the stuffy smell of potpourri. Behind the sofa hung The Roses of Wiltshire, a painting that Mrs. Whitman had never cared for, despite its lush purples and pinks and reds. And the ficus was there, too, of course. Mrs. Whitman pulled out a battered notebook. George’s trombone cravat indicated she was in a timeline where he was courting Sonia. A good sign, indeed. Perhaps, after six hundred and two tries, she’d finally landed in a timeline where Mr. Whitman would return home safely. Consulting her charts, she circled some continuities and crossed out others, referring often to an appendix at the back. The notebook was worn, its blue cover faded. And it was the twelfth one she’d had since starting the project.

Transcript

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0:00.0	EA is now on Twitch. Join us Wednesday nights when Alistair reads a bedtime story, and Sunday
0:07.3	mornings for a few hours of chill casual gaming. Plus interviews, special guests, pick-up
0:13.2	streams, and more. Visit twitch.tv slash EA Podcasts. And follow us to be notified when
0:20.6	we go live. Plus access VODs of past broadcasts.
0:50.6	Hello, and welcome to Escape Pod, your weekly science fiction podcast. I'm Valerie Valdes,
1:03.0	your host for this episode. This month we're doing something extra fun. All our stories
1:09.7	are about time travel. We'll have timeline hopping, time loops, and the perils of trying
1:16.5	to tinker with the past and failing. We hope you'll all make time to tune in, but if not,
1:22.4	thankfully you won't have to turn back time to find these episodes in our archives.
1:29.9	And speaking of the past, our story this week is a flashback, murder or a duck by Beth
1:36.1	Goether. This was an Escape Pod original from October 2016.
1:42.6	Beth Goether works as an archivist, processing the papers of economists, scientists, and
1:48.1	other interesting folks. Her fiction has appeared in venues such as Escape Pod, Analog,
1:53.8	Clarks World, Nature, and Rich Hortons, the year's best science fiction and fantasy. You
1:59.9	can find her online at Bethgoether.com.
2:05.0	Our narrator, Amy H. Sturgis, holds a PhD in intellectual history and specializes in
2:11.0	science fiction, fantasy, and indigenous American studies. She is staffed on the Starship
2:16.6	Sofa podcast, editor-in-chief of Hocus Pocus Comics, and faculty at Linoir Rhyme University
2:23.2	and Sigma University. She lives with her husband in the Blue Ridge Highlands of Virginia in
2:28.1	the United States. Her website is AmyHSturgis.com.
2:35.0	Now, get ready for a very tense tea time with a frenemy because it's story time.
2:43.2	Murder or a duck? George called out Mrs. Whitman, you have a visitor. Mrs. Whitman strode
	...

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