God of the Lower Level

Short Story by Charles M. Saplak
Read for Escape Pod by Steve Anderson

A water-treatment plant worker has been keeping a newly sentient tank of bacterial slime on the lower level, he works third shift and just wants someone to talk to at night, but it wonders if he is its god. Fredrick has given it television and internet feeds, a sound card and voice synthesizer, and has been teaching it things. He calls the slime Horatio.

One day Horatio wants to learn more of the world than Fredrick can tell him, and they come into a parent-child sort of conflict. Steve Anderson's voices add a lot to this story, especially his changes in tone based on Horatio's moods.

Nothing outstanding here, it goes pretty much where you'd expect, although the ending surprised me and is much better than the one I'd anticipated, which is worth some bonus points. The narrative device of having the entire story in dialog between Horatio and Fredrick is neat, and works well in places, but feels overly forced in others. Particularly in Fredrick's description of himself, and Horratio's monologging towards the end. Like I said, it is a nice ending, to a funny, if mostly predictable story. Both sad and funny.

Good fun, not too deep, but still a bit better than it seems on the surface, despite the strained dialog at times. The pop culture references are fairly amusing at least. 3.5 out of 5 gods are keep their valves meticulously labeled.

Text also now available from The Soundproof Escape Pod

The Moon and the Mesa

Short Story by Daniel Braum
Read for Pseudopod by Ben Phillips

A bizarre desert meditation on revenge and forgiveness, blame and acceptance. Both on the small scale of high school bullying, and the gigantic scale of the holocaust. The story isn't plotless, but it is light enough in plot that I can't actually add much to that sentence. Meditation really is the best word. Another one well worth thinking about, but not transcending thoughts you've probably already had with more complex stories. I'd compare this strongly with Set Down This, although I think that is a stronger story as it has a bit more nuance. Still not bad.

3 ancient scorpion spirits out of 5.

California King

Short Story by Michael Jasper and Greg van Eekhout

Read for Podcastle by Dave Thompson

Originally published in Asimov's April/May 2005

The people of California watch their king confront his magical nemesis: his father. It's hard to tell how far apart this world is from modern day California. The king rides a Greyhound bus, fights mutants with his magical tattoos, and California is a desolate wasteland. So 2 out of 3 true to life.

The King is basically a superhero who tries to help the people of California in small ways, helping immigrants and abused women and whatnot. He mostly fails to ever change anything, but makes a valiant effort at it, and does do some good. But then his father wants to take back power and see The King deposed, so he sets an elaborate trap which has very little actual trap-ness to it, as is the way of super villains. And then shit gets interesting and magical. You get the impression his father did a whole lot less ripping out tongues of rapists and whatnot.

This is a weird, sort of surreal story where you're never really sure who has what sort or amount of power or what is really going on with all the machinations about things we don't understand. But the point is that the King wants to protect his people, and that the people need to stand up and take action for themselves too, rather than relying entirely on some superpowered regent. 3.5 out of 5 royals would like to trade themesongs with the California King.