Original Science Fiction - Makeshift Stories
By Vern Hume
Categories: Fiction, Science Fiction, Arts
Makeshift Stories is an indie sci-fi, fantasy, and speculative fiction podcast. Each month, journey with us through uncharted futures, strange realities, and rebellious technologies. Let your imagination soar and discover what tomorrow might bring.
326 episodes indexed on PodSearch.
Recent episodes
- Untouched by the World
For his entire life, Vimal has lived in a sterilized apartment, building an online following as The Guy Who's Never Been Touched. Leaving his sealed world could kill him. Unexpectedly, geneticist Ada Godwin tells him she has a cure. Freedom suddenly becomes possible—but it comes with unknown…
- The Hacking of a Lonely Heart (Part 2)
Authorities tie RZ to Rhonda’s alias and begin to move in. However, she refuses to leave without helping Gene escape financial ruin caused by Doctor Reid, a virtual online therapist program that has been conning him out of his money. She decides to take down Net Wellness by exposing the company's…
- The Hacking of a Lonely Heart (Part 1)
Thirty-five years after fleeing Cascadia, infamous hacktivist Rhonda—RZ—returns to New Vancouver when her former lover, Gene, begins spending his savings on treatments recommended by an online therapist. Gene insists Doctor Reid understands him better than anyone ever has. Rhonda suspects…
- Virtue Deprecated
At an exclusive island retreat for billionaires, celebrities, and politicians, Rani watches his lifelong friend Arjun get pulled into a universe where money erases limits—and other people’s problems become someone else’s responsibility. When the brain interface Arjun has designed for him…
- The Tenacity Hack
Kenzo, a former corporate IP enforcer, is hiding from his old employers by working on a remote farm. When Janet X, who owns the farm, gets a patent-infringement threat about crops she insists are legal, Kenzo steps in to help. At first, it seems like a typical patent troll case, but Kenzo catches…
- Good Bot
During a deadly heat wave, unwilling to abandon his aging collie or give up his independence, 80-year-old Ryker refuses to leave his subsidized apartment. He soon becomes delirious from dehydration and heat, hallucinating that he is alone on a doomed alien world with a loyal robot. But when he…
- There Are No Aliens
Aurora attends a remote conference to research fringe beliefs in aliens and UAPs for an article she is writing. She meets a provocative neuroscientist, Doctor Tracey Bukowski, whose theories link universal consciousness to unexplained phenomena. Aurora finds Bukowski’s ideas crazy, but after a few…
- The Meatspace Hire (Part 2)
Renata’s trail leads Matteo to an automated distribution centre, where he uncovers proof that a false insurance claim is a cover for a larger fraud involving relabelled memory modules and corrupted AI hardware. Matteo finds Renata alive but ends up trapped, forced to choose between escape and…
- Threat Machine
With an early snow threatening to destroy her first good crop in years, Harper’s combine breaks down. When the dealer can’t fix it in a timely manner, she is forced to take matters into her own hands and get her neighbour to repair a broken belt. But when a software update detects the unauthorized…
- The Meatspace Hire (Part 1)
Matteo works as a consultant for wealthy collectors, authenticating their purchases to ensure they are not AI-manufactured fakes, until his sister Renata vanishes after sending him a cryptic message concerning a fake insurance claim. After the authorities refuse to investigate, he is forced into…
- A Solution, Not a Cure
While on holiday, Lena shows Erin an old photo of a woman who looks exactly like her. Initially, Erin dismisses the resemblance. However, when Lena reveals she is dying of cancer, Erin admits that it is her and that there are other historical images of her. She confesses that as a result of a…
- The Happiness Variant
Hana Grabowski, a genetic engineer with a failing gene-mod business, takes a secretive contract to restore humanity’s appetite for impulsive behaviour. When her staff threatens to revolt, she uses a variant to alter their attitude. However, the mosquitoes she uses to infect them escape, unleashing…
- The Vedika Ray File
Nora, a scientist’s daughter, enlists true-crime host Alan Humphrey to solve the disappearance of her mother’s “deathbot.” At first, Humphrey is reluctant to take the job, but he can not resist the mystery. The clues soon take Humphrey from New Yellowknife to Uranium City, a defunct mining town…
- The Klotho Factor
Kenzo Tanaka, a washed-up intellectual property rights enforcer turned PI, takes a “lost dog” case from a woman he believes to be a dazzling biotech heiress. However, he soon discovers that the dog is a human-canine chimera growing a life-extending Klotho gland, which is highly illegal. His…
- 316 Builder of Monsters
In exchange for the chance to reunite with his family, roboticist Sebit Deng has spent years on an isolated island in the South Pacific, building an android clone for aging industrialist Gregory Vance. As Vance approaches death, Sebit rushes to complete the transfer, only to discover that the…
- Senescence (Part 2)
When Surya, a hardware engineer, buys an old NASA computer at a garage sale, she uncovers lost Voyager 2 data. She tracks down a retired scientist named in the file, who claims the data indicates a killing wave of cosmic radiation is headed for Earth. As she and the old scientist race to confirm…
- Senescence (Part 1)
Surya, a tech historian, buys an old Sun workstation at a garage sale, expecting a working example of a CPU her grandmother designed, not secrets. Accidentally left on the drive are two files of NASA’s lost Voyager 2 data. When she attempts to learn about the workstation’s history by contacting a…
- Solitude of the Deep Dark
During a dive to repair a submersible mining robot, Rohan, a deep-sea specialist, discovers the true cause of the machine's malfunction: the metallic nodules it was harvesting are alive, ancient, and lying in wait. Too late, Rohan realizes that they can hijack his mind and body. Trapped within…
- From Wonder Valley to Nowhere
Forced into Wonder Valley, a holding facility for seniors needing care, 83-year-old Ellie resists her cheerful AI handlers and their synthetic paradise. She finds solace in the company of Aura, an aging, fuzzy robot dog who has developed more empathy than its creators intended. Over time, their…
- Anima Incognita
After living off-grid for forty years, Shane is drawn back into society when his former best friend—now the political leader of the territory—announces plans to develop the wilderness area that Shane calls home. While watching the announcement, Shane realizes that Gabriel isn't the person he once…
- No I in AI
Salvini, an out-of-work programmer, uses a hidden backdoor in her former employer's system to create an AI called Bandhu, which hunts for jobs and outsmarts the hiring platforms. She asks it to find a position that won't be replaced by AI, and when it finally delivers a job as a remote robotics…
- Utopia Base
Faraday and Quinn arrive at a remote mining site on the far side of the moon that supplies helium-3 to Utopia Base, where they have lived their entire lives believing the Earth has been devastated. Faraday soon realizes that she has forgotten her supply of a medication called Sustain, which…
- Personal Detritus
Liam, a laid-off tech worker turned scavenger, lives a double life—by day, a conscripted worker in a waste recycling plant; by night, Rupert Hudson, a venture capitalist, mingling with the elite using forged credit cards. When he retrieves a careless billionaire’s trash and uses it to access vast…
- Scissors Paper Rock App Computer
At 75, Kaber Grewal should be retired in the sun, not taking gigs to pay for his hip replacement. Hired by a mysterious client to analyze communications, he uncovers signs of cognitive decline in Praeses, the AGI running the government. He is paid well for his time but warned to forget what he…
- A New Star in Aries
Professor Hollis Cooper, an underground scientist, must pass a daily test to prove her belief in the official facts. But she comes under investigation when she accidentally slips up in a lecture. Official interest in her couldn’t come at a worse time, as Hollis and a colleague, using banned…
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