Escape Pod 913: #buttonsinweirdplaces (Part 1 of 2)

Escape Pod

Escape Artists Foundation

Fiction, Drama, Science Fiction

4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2023

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

#buttonsinweirdplaces By Simon Kewin The buttons started to appear on the last day of April, 2022. A six-year-old boy from Nairobi, Jomi Mbenzi, was perhaps the first to spot one. Dawdling along behind his mother, her swaying yellow-orange dress and the bag of melons and paw-paws she carried, his attention was caught by the shiny button set in the stone of one of the city’s office buildings. He squatted to study it. Strange that it was so low-down, right near the ground. In his experience, switches – and all other interesting aspects of the adult world – were kept high-up, out of reach, but here was this button set right where he could get at it. He was sure it hadn’t been there an hour ago when they walked down the same road toward the fruit market. Ground-level was his domain and he noticed everything there, while the confusing, noisy grown-up world went on around him and above him. There was no writing on or near the button, nothing to suggest what its purpose might be. Buttons often had words on them to say what they did, words he rarely understood. Or else, they had warnings nearby telling you not, under any circumstances, to press – a fact which always struck him as odd. Why have a button you couldn’t press?

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 podcasts.
0:50.6	Hello and welcome to Escape Pod, your weekly science fiction podcast. I'm Valerie Valdez,
1:14.4	your host for this episode. Our story this week is Buttons in Weird Places by Simon Kuen. This
1:22.4	story originally appeared in Abyss in Apex in September 2021, and will be presented in two parts.
1:30.3	Simon Kuen is an award-winning writer of fantasy and sci-fi, with over 400 publications to his name.
1:36.2	He's the author of the Kloven Land Fantasy Trilogy, cyberpunk thriller The Gene Hunter,
1:41.2	steam punk gorman gas saga engine, the triple star's sci-fi trilogy, and the office of the
1:47.0	witch finder general books, published by L. Swen Press. He's the author of several short story
1:52.6	collections, with his shorter fiction appearing in analog, nature, and many other magazines. His
1:58.7	novel Dead Star was an SPSFC award semi-finalist, and Buttons in Weird Places was shortlisted for a
2:05.4	utopia award. His novella at the clockwork king won the tailors by moonlight editor's prize.
2:13.6	Our narrator Rebecca Weiss-Shit is a Taiwanese American actor, writer, translator, and sensitivity
2:20.0	reader based in New York City. Having grown up across several continents, her work focuses on the
2:25.6	interplay between Asia and the Asian diaspora, gender, queerness, and mental illness, and has been
2:31.6	featured in outlets like We Need Diverse Books, where your voice magazine, book riot, and the
2:37.1	dot in line. She has a BA in theater and Italian studies from Wesleyan University,
2:42.4	and you can find her attempts to use her liberal arts degree at rwshea.com.
2:50.0	Now get ready for a mystery of impossible proportions to hit social media around the world,
2:56.4	because it's story time.
	...

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