Escape Pod 1065: Sister Cities

0:00Escape pod. Episode 1665. Sister Cities. I'm a Reavibot. 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 Sister Cities by Marie Vibbert. This is an Escape pod original. A Hugo and Nebula Award finalist, author Marie Vibbert's short fiction has appeared

1:02over 100 times in top magazines like Nature, Analog and Clarksworld, and been translated into Czech, Chinese and Vietnamese. Her debut novel Galactic Hellcats was long listed by the British Science Fiction Award, and her work has been called Everything Science Fiction Should Be by the Oxford Culture Review. She is the editor of the 2026 Triangulation Anthology Bad Romance. She also writes poetry, comics and computer games. A day, she is a computer programmer in Cleveland, Ohio. Our near-eater, Toran Andres, is a full-time voice actor and digital artist residing in the Pacific Northwest. After many years working corporate life, they are happily expanding on all the creative dreams they've carried with them since childhood. They've spent many years now, placing audiobooks and audio dramas, drawing book covers, interviewing wonderful creators and even creating jingles and musical intros.

2:05Currently, they're obsessively learning more about comic art and collusion. Now, get ready for a tale of two cities in the not-so-best of times because it's storytime. The Poor House Tavern is built on a stairway with low ceilings that step down along with the bar, so it's hard to see who's at the other end, and the smoke gathers on the high side, making it even harder. And that's why I didn't notice rusty until crash yanked me down to her mouth-level to shout. My drone came back from West Leg. She raises her brows, wide into her eyes, like the only reason I'm not squealing in excitement is that I don't get what she means. It means that, for once, the halo didn't shoot something down.

3:07Nothing more, nothing less. But now I've seen Rusty there and he's looking over at us like he's wondering what we're up to. Rusty's Arrival Climer, with a rich daddy who underbids contracts because he does it need the money. I haul crash off her bar stool. She weighs less than a kitten, and shoulder my way out to the steeply-slanding alley. In one direction, the center of town gleams like a golden bowl. And the other, and I smell piss. I turn to crash with my most bored expression. You think you can get to the halo? I know it! Look, I have footage and a flight plan! Ignore it, I say. Nothing but misery and death for the folks who try to go up. Her eyes are open wounds. Gee-eech! You're the only real climber I know! Do you want me to do this solo? I'm probably the only person in Crater Town that doesn't dream about getting to the halo.

4:08It's this donut-shaped, floating city, sure to the edges out of our crater. All the kids here learn about the forces that keep it up, the anomaly and the magnetosphere. The special meteor fragments buried around town. And I mean all the kids. I get lectures on physics from seven-year-olds. It's not that I'm not from here. Growing up in port landing, Crater Town was a dream destination, a place that was genuine to this planet, not the same old galactic mass production. And you know what? I love it! The sun glowing on the cliffs that peak through buildings no matter which direction you're facing. And tidy streets that sometimes turn sharply into ramps. The cafes built on balconies and landings. Hell, even the halo. That unnatural thing, glinting silver or hiding in low fog, casting down its shadows, making the lights come on. Crater Town glitters with points of light all the time.

5:11Even forgotten nooks are strong with lamps in rainbow colors. Couldn't crash see the beauty right here? And Rusty pokes his head out of the bar. And light crash can read my mind. She joins me in tromping of the alleyway, past the piss smell into the darker, more twisting streets. Rusty once had a drone snatch a stranded cat. A drone nearly broke its paw. We don't talk to Rusty. Our twisty alley opens into a broader street, all cobbles and shops. It's late though, so everything is closed. This is the neighborhood with horses carved on the walls and the little iron rings to tie off your hover bike. Crash says, I need this. Crash's mom died trying to get to the halo. It's sad. It's epic level mommy issues. Normally, I pretend I don't know anything to keep the subject silent.

6:12But this time, I unload the nuclear option. It's not going to bring her back. I know that. Barely a whisper. This is for me. Why doesn't anyone get that? Crash has this fold under her lip that means she's not going to give up until she has her way. And I know I'm not going to let my bestie go solo if I can't talk her out of it. Can we pick this up in the morning? I'm way too buzzed for this. Aligh, I've been nursing a water with a lime slice, hoping someone will buy me a drink. But Crash falls for a blatant lie the way she never would a well-crafted one. Tomorrow, sunset, the goat fountain. She says, and leaves me at the next slip rail stop. My apartment is near the top of a tapering concrete pylon, one of many standing like a ring of cool white teeth around the center of the warm sandstone city.

7:16They were used to lift the first part of the halo into place. But the perspective bothers me. They look too close together for the outer edge of the ring, and too far apart for the inner. There's video footage of it going up, so I can't deny the intersection of the ring once hung from these towers before catching hold of whatever it is that all the school kids can lecture about. Maybe that's why I love this city. Every day, you can see the limits of human perception. Over half of the towers have been torn down to make a wave of things. Most of the remaining ones are apartments like mine, one per floor, getting smaller as they go up with excellent elevators and terrible plumbing. When I get to my block, my alerts are already stacking. I'm in demand. I put on my climbing gear and skip the elevator. I love being a climber. I see parts of the city feucy.

8:17Well, feucy all love. I'm sure each wall top and decoration has its admirers, peering from small balconies or Garrett windows. Every rooftop halo is some kids' secret getaway. They're in climb their own buildings and their neighbors. That's how I got started. The port landing had fewer ledges you could get a finger into and a lot more cops pulling you back to your parents. Sitting in my apartment window, I flick to order my incoming request geographically, then flick again to prioritize cats. I change my clothes and have a snack, and within 20 minutes, I'm at a Garrett where a worried man gestures helplessly. Smokey never jumps, but there was a bird. We see the set smokey. A city cloud of fur, crouching fearfully on an olive branch sticking over a neighboring roof. Whatever it is that makes cats so good at getting up, but unwilling to come down, keeps me in bob.

9:17The big cat hisses like a demon and swipes at me, but becomes boneless in my arms. He starts purring the minute the old man touches him. Oh, thank you, mixed jeez. Nose to nose, they commune in cat language, and I consider that half my tip. Then, I'm off to replace some lights, move in antenna, retrieve a toy, and then more lights. All those tiny ground stars that fight the halo shadow, and it's always the inaccessible ones that break down, typical evening for me. I'm grimy and sweaty and cat scratch when the halo shadow abruptly shifts away and long beams of sunlight drag across the jumble of the roof level. Dawn is the drawing of drain pipes and air vents built need to buy need, individual and messy, like the chambers of an ant hill. This is a city, pure human habitat. That up there? Maybe it's as pretty as the drama's make it, but it was all built at once.

10:22That lacks something. By the rising light, I don't have time to get home, so I head to meet Crash. I'll sleep after I tell her not to do this. Our crater was settled long before it swelled with workers constructing the halo. Early colonists found the soil good and the rock walls not a challenge when the local ore powers hover cars, so crater town is dotted with sudden plazas and fountains, marking the center of some community now subsumed by the whole. Why this one has a pair of goats dancing on their hind legs, his beyond me. The water didn't run when I first moved here, but it's been repaired. An elusty column continually collapses on itself between the goats, spattering on their faces and hooves. You can see one is a male goat and one is a female. The whole thing is erotic in the weirdest way. A stout man with a permanent scalp is roasting nuts on a wide stove. Transistent letters and neon color spin and flash over his head.

11:25Plazas snacks for Bobcredit transfer, three Bobcash. It's a good price, and I have the cash, so I buy a paper bag dotted with hot grease and smelling like holidays. Crash is always late. I have time to play my strategy. She'll say. The mystery is the point. The rich founders of the halo have never allowed any photos or videos inside their city to be published. None of the very few who have met the strict requirements to go up there have ever come back either. Take a photo and be famous, a big balloon for the independent entrepreneur. I'll say. No one wants a mystery revealed. I should think up other arguments, but I like that one too much. The nearest tether point for the halo, West Leg, is close enough to loom over the brick buildings around Goat Plaza, a chrome invader from some other genre. In the old days, people would climb the tethers. They died, of course. Those who didn't fall from sheer exhaustion were taken out by security drones.

12:28To this day, housing under the tethers is cheap, because the memory of a corpse crashing into your kitchen dies slowly. When the halo went up, it left behind a swollen population of unemployed artisans, a city with its economic center torn out. Of course, people were desperate to get up there, that glittering city in the sky, new and polished was stolen well. It cost a million Bob to apply to move there, and there is a cap of one approved per year, exclusive as exclusive gets. These days, it's a news item when some rich person applies. Some don't even take the trip once they're approved. It's bragging rights just to be approved. Why are people still obsessed? Crater Town recovered. We make the best lighting and gadgets on the southern continent. People come from other worlds to attend our art festivals. The glider rail to port landing never stops discouraging eager young suckers, looking

13:29to learn to make elegant drones or life sculptures, and unaware that their cats are going to be uptree within a week. And good god damn are these roasted nuts, glorious! By the time crash is huffing across the plaza at a jog, dwarfed by her backpack, I've felt a solid argument to give up the whole enterprise, with prepared counters for her objections. I'm not prepared for her to drop the pack at my feet and grab my shoulder, pressing her slight weight onto me as she catches her breath. Easy, I say. Back it up. We can't. She swallows. We have to go now. Resty and his gang are getting ready to go. We have to be the first. Oh no. There's an itch in my gut. Competitiveness. That's a bait I know I should ignore, but can't. I thought you said no one knew.

14:30She blows a hair out of her face and glairs at me like I'm stupid. The defense drones are down. You think I'm the only one who probes them? In a sentence we go from this might be possible, to we have to be the first. I push her gently back onto her own feet. We're not going up what's like. It's right there. As much as I object to the idea of climbing up to the halo, I'd form my plan ages ago, how I'd do it. A mental exercise mostly fueled by the obvious mistakes others make. If the drones are down, we fly up. Her eyes widen with averis and I can feel myself being pushed out of our plan. Our plan. Let's happen to my brain. But the highest climb, the free advertising, painting rusty. I quickly add, you'll still need a climber to get in. We've seen the footage.

15:31The zoom cameras from shot down drones. The halo platform is ringed by a wall as high as any hilltop fortress in ancient Europe and a glass dome over the top. Only a climber could find the hidden entrances. These squeeze is my shoulder, like good thinking, mate. I already regret this. Crash rints and air scooter. One of the tourist types. Not much more than two seats and handlebars in the shape of a swan. The sun is over the halo, throwing shadows on the ring of pylon buildings by the time we push off for my apartment window. But still, crash is anxious that we might be seen, rising against the shattered ring. I'm able to talk to her out of her plan of leaving crater town completely and coming in from above only because it would give Rusty more time to catch up. Anyway, I'm driving. Crash comes by her nickname for a reason. We skim the rooftops to a point where West Leg casts its shadow on us and then we go

16:32straight up. The legs are big and metal pylons, perched on the edges of the crater, leaning inward, swish-shaped. But their tops are the cables invisible from the ground that attach the halo platform keeping it in place over the city. The cable is massive, up close. There are safety lights on it, but most burned out a long time ago. The halo picked keeping the rabble out over ease of maintenance. The higher we follow the leg, the more lights are intact. The air scooter handles like a shopping cart with a stuck wheel and the winds are yanking us. Still, Crash insists on staying very close under the cable in the hard-noons shadow. She's hugging my waist and uses her grip to steer me when I get too far. I try to explain that it doesn't matter where we fly. We are always going to risk being seen. There are people who live on the edge of the crater for a luck's sake.

17:34But okay, she's deploying the chin wrinkle and I know better than to beat my head against a brick wall. We're going at the scooter's top speed and its engine is worrying like it'll burn up. But with everything huge or far away, it feels like we're crawling. It also feels like walking out of a store after shoplifting. The halo drones will shoot us down any second. The safety patrol will come and yank us away for our own protection. The halo grows. We can see where the wall meets the dusty dome. Crash grabs my arm, nails digging in. Shit! This causes me to jerk the yoke and we nearly fall over and my blood is in my ears and I'm over-correcting and my elbow nearly brushes the crushing hard cable. And crash is still jerking at me, trying to get me to look behind us. Finally, the stupid swan is stable enough for me to look in the rear-view mirror. A fuzzy, something swinging left and right is gaining us. A drone? I tap the glass to magnify.

18:36Rusty himself hangs practically over the hood ornament of a sporty red hover car, wearing goggles, his stupid orange curls whipping behind him. Lips parted, alt-teeth, like he's slurping up the air. How I hate that guy? No! Crash says right as I turn us into the sun as I knew she would. Well, if halo security forces are watching, they've got two targets now. I try something from the cereals, swinging closer to the tether back and forth like it can wipe the tail off of us. Crash screams something that's lost in the wind. But I'm pretty sure it's how I am an idiot. Crash crumbles over me and takes the wheel. Crash destroyed three flyers in the demolition derby they hold every summer solstice, not on purpose. I suppose I gave her more experience in my religious watching of Beyond the Stars because she's dropping as low and up like a fish on the line.

19:38And all I can do is hang onto a flimsy sculpted wing as the city yons below and the beside me up and down are becoming complex terms. We've reached where the tether cable connects to the city platform with a junction box the size of a castle. The halo's shadow is falling and lifting over us like a waving flag and my stomach wants to crawl up my throat and jump out. Thankfully one limb at a time I crawl around crash and into the rear seat. I'm looking right at Rusty because, well, as he matches our moves, it's the most stable point to focus on. He's close enough to spit. I'm looking him right in the eyes when his ship is hit. I see the grin drop, the white go all the way around his irises, and then Rusty, ship, and stupid hair are all spiraling toward the ground trailing smoke. I clench my eyes and use one hand to check the straps on my parachute. It's coming from the halo!

20:40Crash out and something zings close enough to burn my hair. She's crying and screaming orders I don't catch. That's all that's clear of the four seconds or so between Rusty going down and our right wing snapping off like an invisible giant yanked it. And we're spinning and I puke and it hits my cheek and fly sideways or maybe that was down. And I have my climbing harness on so I fire a grapple and grab crash around the waist before I know if it caught anything. The grapple jerks taught. The scooter falls away under us, a broken toy. And crash is clinging to me like a pissed off cat all nails dug in. I hit the button to retract the grapple and we glide slowly up until we are on a thin little ledge of lattice around what looks like the cannon that shot us down. Once we're sure our butts are secure on the ledge and it isn't going to break under us, we take a long time to get our breathing under control. Crash rubs her face with her palms and stares above us.

21:40The city wall looks as high as endless from here, curving away from us. What do we do? I have to grin. I can't help it. Someone loves being right. We climb. A straight wall climb is a nordial. The city defenses shot some birds and I dropped his four feet from the heart attack that sound gave me. Trick or happy bastards. The wall is a wall, smooth as glass. Maybe they thought that would keep climbers from getting up, but it was perfect for my suction grips. It does not feel easier as the wall curves under us. It doesn't get near horizontal for another ten stories above, but soon I see our ticket. An honest to God's busted window. Guess they happen even in paradise. I imagine a thrown vase during a heated argument about whose toned it is to fuck the robot buttler. The ledge is big enough for Crash and me to hang off side by side.

22:42We take another long breath. We're looking at a corridor? The floor is only a story below so I drop down. The thought hits before I straighten. I look again at the greasy planking under my boots and try raising my gaze slower. Like it'll come out different this time. Crash lands behind me with harsh exhale and we are silent together for a beat. What a dump! She says. I mean, I guess they have their bad neighborhoods up here. I say. And whistles sharply from the broken window, ruffling the trash droon about the corridor, which is actually an alley. The walls graffiti, grimy, and full of ad-hoc repairs, and well below the dome, which paints the sky a dull, dusty blue. First, I take out the paint pen I brought for this moment, and we write our names on a clear patch of wall. Crash and jeep, we are first.

23:45We take a photo and crash frowns at it because it could have been taken in a not very interesting part of poor landing. We retake it. With the window behind us, angled up to show the curving dome. We're doing this again when we're not in the town dump. Crash growls. The alley opens out onto a street, and it's not better. There's a weed choked strip along the path, with a half disassembled skimmer car peeking out of the tall grass. There's another skimmer car down the street, and it's at least 50 years out of date. Crash brushes it with her fingertips and an alarm wails. We jump back. A window opens on one of the grim buildings and a shot fires, pinging on the pavement inches away from us. We run. There's a neglected sort of park, and we take refuge in the overgrown bushes. Crash is laughing silently under her huffs for breath. That was a shed of cat 18. Like grandpa had one.

24:46A scam between the trees and bushes. What I'm seeing is a landscape from 100 years ago. The elongated shapes of a dream of an airy city. Metal and glass clouded by time. There's one new building, cheap and square with safety barred circular windows. A wet cough alerts me that we are not alone. A shape huddles on a park bench, shoulder shifting for comfort. The longer we sit without pursuit from whoever that was with the gun, the more we calm down. We stand and stretch. Every direction reveals more trash, more ugliness. Big cracks and windows repaired with tape. A dangling wire from a broken light fixture. The man on the park bench stirs and stares at us with alarm. Crash approaches him before I can stop her. Hey, we're looking for the good side of town. Which way do we go? Clockwise or counter?

25:46The man gathers the coat he was using as a blanket against his chest. Slowly like he's trying to remember a poem learned in grade school, he says. The spot is taken. He smells like piss. Come on, I tug crash away. It's a ring. Either direction works. The design of the city becomes clear after a few blocks. There are buildings on either side of us, with occasional alleys ending in windows between them, and a string of defiled parks and empty ponds in the center. It's like a hollow tree, still alive only on the edges, or like something that is eating itself. I'm filming everything, of course. We came, we saw, we leave. I point behind us. Out the window and parachute jump and we're safe and sound received as heroes. The first visitors to the halo. Crash shakes her head. This isn't it.

26:47She hurries ahead and I have to catch up. We're in some market district. There are store signs, but everything has smaller signs saying, by appointment only, and no public restrooms or no public water. It's a dying city of locked doors. The only sign of life is a snapping down of shutters when we look in windows. Crash points up. A man stares at us, leaning over a balcony railing. I wave. Hey, hi, we're... He's gone like a mouse that sees a cat's shadow. We start trying doors, and eventually one is open. Well, open is inaccurate. It's bent and damaged so that I'm able to slide a climbing pick through the gap and then hook the chain holding it shut. Crash is bouncing. This is it. I bet the riches, the beautiful places are inside. It's a musty corridor with stained yellow carpet, but crash is optimistic, trying other

27:48doors. This has to be like a utility passage. For deliveries or taking out trash, we've been on the worker side of things. The deeper we get, the less I'm sure. I smell cooking smells, and some of the doors have welcome mats. They're all locked, and no one answers our knocks, though I see peepholes and mounted cameras. We reach a stair at the end of the corridor, a wider space, with two busted open-vending cabinets, and a kid stares at us. One hand on the crayon she is using to draw the much abused crit pattern walls. Hi! Crash says. Can you show us some police fancy? I don't have any money. The girl says. Crash and I look at each other. I shrug. Neither do we. We're looking for something cool to see. The kid turns her back to the wall and tucks her crayon into a pocket on the chest of her

28:48tattered jumper. I like your clothes. We're both in utility suits. Mine's slick black under my climbing harness. Crash is pink. But nothing special. But her clothes are the only clean and bright things in sight. Crash crutches to the kid's height. Were you born here on the halo? The kid's eyes give wide. You're from down in dirt town. That's it. From now on, I'm calling this the toilet seat. We just came to see. Show my friend something impressive and we'll leave. She points. That way, you first. There's a door from the stairwell into a courtyard with a dry swimming pool and some rusty play equipment. We have the best in the city. The girl brags. She's pointing at a chipped, embattered fountain. Also dry. Against the wall of the courtyard. A stone line with visible rough spots where his teeth were knocked out.

29:50Yon's eternally over an upturned clamshell full of refuse. We inspect the fountain and try to act impressed. When we hear a rushing behind us, fabric and feet and door slamming. A dozen people rush through three different doors, all in armored vests and helmets with visors, holding big, right shields and batons. Crash and I have nothing behind us but a broken fountain. The little girl gasps. Someone called the cops. And scampers away. Show us your papers. One of the visored anonymous figures, shouts. Crash and I slowly raise our hands. Just visiting, I say, will go if you want. You people. She's snares. She's closer now and I can see the feminine shape of her jaw under the visor. You want what we have, but you don't want to earn it. She flicks her baton to the side and it expands, crackling with electricity. Over the side for you.

30:53I grab Crash's hand and run hard to the side. I'm thinking about Rusty, about not so automated fire. There's no way out of this courtyard, but how we got in. But my plan, instinctual as it is, is to get them chasing us so the door is unguarded. The cops are smarter than that. They split into one group waiting to catch us. We're trapped. A glass apartment door shatters behind us. I hope that little kid got away clear. My mom was right. I'm going to get myself killed. She meant moving out of my own so young, but she was only off by two years. I shoot my grapple at a balcony overhead and we tumble over the railing, gunshots peppering the walls around us. The safety glass balcony door blooms with multiple impacts. Below I hear them shouting things like dirt grubbers and worms. Crash throws a potted plant into the courtyard. I kick the door apart and we crawl into the apartment.

31:55It's dim. Some people are huddled behind a corner staring out at us. The furnishings are old fashioned, but we'll cared for. It smells...well, it smells like someone shouldn't hear a long time ago and no one did anything about it. Excuse us. I say. And we leave the apartment by its front door. They'll be coming up here. Crash says. We're trapped. There's a bank of elevators but they're dark and I suspect they don't work. There's a stairwell door propped open with a brick. A bang echoes below and the sounds of boots pounding upstairs. Parachute, I say, and point at the end of the corridor where there's a big window. Sure enough, it's looking out on the plane around Crater Town. I've never had a harder time opening a window and it had a simple lever handle. There's a scramble trying to get over the edge. The wind's screaming and we hear a door bang behind us and then we're falling and crashes

32:58screaming and damn if my shoot doesn't open on the first tug. But it opens. And despite a few bullet holes, we're floating down to the city I love, alive. The wind has pushed us under out of window range. Safe and sound. This face is all wet against my collarbone but I'm looking at the many trace reels of sundial murals that track the flow of the halo through the day. I mean the toilet seat. I think we get more out of the halo now than they get from us. It's not a graceful landing. The shoot catches on something. I don't even know what. And we fall on a roof and have to release and crawl down the side of a house to the street. I'm trembling like a new nerve. We're in one of the edge plazas, hard up on a crater wall. We must have crossed most of the city on the way down. A road worker rushes to us from the traffic direction stand.

33:59Are you alright? Were you? He looks at my shoot flapping like a holiday banner and I can tell he can't even begin to form the right question. I'm delighted. I can't talk fast enough. We were first. We made it to the halo and it's trash. It's absolute garbage. We're some port landing. Freedom isn't free. I mean, they were mad like we were stealing something. Wait, wait. What happened to Rusty? Did anyone see him? Someone's running to get someone official. Rusty made it. Someone says, after I describe him, give his full name and explain what happened. In central square of all places, someone's brought up fluffy robes for some reason and cups of hot soup. I turn to hand the second one to crash and she's looking up at the halo. Tears glow blue on her cheeks. The set of relip now means she's feeling a dream die.

35:01I'm sure it used to, I begin. Don't, she says. Don't defend them. There are no windows on the bottom. I see where she's looking and it'd be hard to be sure from this distance, but I know she's right. I put my arm around her shoulder. So, poor house? She jabs me hard, which is fair. The poor house is miles away and their place is waiting for us to discover them in this neighborhood. Once again, that was Sister Cities by Marie Vibert. The author had this to say about her story.

36:02I started this story at a riding retreat in Italy where I spent a week in a thousand year old monastery north of Siena. I'd ride calvinos in visible cities for the retreat and it bounced around in my head along with the gorgeous architecture of Siena and hit an old idea of mine. But I wanted the city floating above to be total trash and the city in the dirt to be idyllic. A sort of reversal of the trope I'd seen a lot. Humans love to invent and speculate about idealized cities and societies. From the mythical Atlantis to the calypolis of Socrates up to Thomas Mores Utopia and beyond, we imagine how much greener our grass could be if only things were different, if we were on the other side of the fence, or as in this story, in the city above us, in the sky. We've also, in fiction and in real life, seen what can happen when those who decide they know best gather together and form their own cities with their own rules and restrictions,

37:05or like they're of. For every Atlantis, there is an omeloss, or a pan-m, or a rapture, or a graft and new hamcher. You may end up fighting genetically modified survivors of an underwater class war, or just trying to keep bears out of your backyard because your neighbors voted to defund garbage pick up and wildlife management. You may, as in this story, discover the city you thought was paradise, is anything but. Even if there is an idyllic sector floating high above the masses, their pristine plenty is typically bought with the blood and sweat of those literally and figuratively beneath them. But as we enter the age of dreaming about moon bases and Martian habitats, many of us are starting to think that we're actually doing fine right where we are. The dreams people are trying to sell us, a freedom and escape and leaving behind the messes we've made feel more pie in the sky than ever when we could instead improve our

38:06own homes and neighborhoods and cities. Maybe it would serve us better if we made our own grass greener instead of wishing we had a different yard. Maybe we can replace it with a vegetable garden, or a zeroscape to save water. Maybe we can even let it go to seed and learn to appreciate the dandelions. Looking up at the stars is good, but sometimes looking down at the dirt is a different kind of ideal. Escape Pod is part of the Escape Artist Foundation, a 501c3 nonprofit. This episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Drividives 4.0 International License. Don't change it. Don't sell it. Please do share it. If you'd like to support Escape Pod, please rate or review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite app. We are 100% audience supported, and we count on your donations to keep the lights on and the server summing.

39:07You can now donate via four different platforms. On Patreon and CoVee, search for Escape Artist. On Twitch and YouTube, we're at EA Podcasts. You can also use Paypal through our website, escapepod.org. Patreon subscribers have access to exclusive merchandise and can be automatically at a door discord, where they can chat with other fans as well as our staff members. Our opening and closing music is by Dicaiju at Dicaiju.org. And our closing quotation this week is from italo kelvino, who said, cities like dreams are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret. Their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else. Thanks for joining us and may your escape pod be fully stocked with stories.