Untold Podcast

Jeff Ben Wa-lid can't stop fighting with his dad, so his mom sends him to his hippie relative - Uncle Jesus.

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Maybe you've heard of my Uncle Jesus. A lot of people say crazy things about him. One lady asked me if he shot fire out of his eyes and I was all, "Whut? That's whacked, lady!" And then I got into trouble for being disrespectful. I gotta watch it. In Israel 28 AD, you piss off the grown-ups too much and they'll get that whole rock throwing thing going at you, and my dad would be glad to help. 

I'm Jesus's nephew. The name is Jeff, Jeff Ben Wa-lid of the Jerusalem Ben-Wa-lids. My dad is Avram.  My grandfather, Wa-lid, opened a big chain of market places called Wa-lid Marts. Yeah, with that kind of bread, you guessed it, dad became a Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin. I dunno, I try to listen, I try to be a good son, but when I talk to him about anything, it's like he's speaking a different language. Like yesterday, we were sitting on the roof, having breakfast and he turned to me and said, "Greyt oyf dayn shtudium?"  (So how's school?)

I mean, seriously…What's he saying?

I relate to my mom a lot easier. But she still gets after me.

"Jeff, it is not good that you quarrel with your father so much. By all that is holy, I say you will be the death of each other."

A young performer comes up with a plan to change the negative perception of clowns.

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“It is the worse time to be a clown.” I said to Doodle.

The aged clown sighed and leaned back as far as he could on the three-legged stool. He only wore the faintest amount of greasepaint: Blue diamonds around his eyes and a thin black and red smile touching each cheek. “Listen Knicknack, clowns have been around since ancient Greece. We’ve survived empires and wars. We can survive a few scary movies.”

“A few scary movies?” I said. “It’s more than that! Ringling Brothers closed last year! The clown association has lost half of it’s membership in five years. Half! And even McDonalds ended their Ronald program. There’s nowhere else for us to go except these run-down mom-and-pop circuses, Doodle!”

A small but deadly snake becomes the protector of a human king.

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I burst out of my egg, shattering the shell, and slither into the big, cold world. Warm hands are there to meet me. Human hands. They lift me up and let me share their heat. I am happy there.
The hands belong to an old man with tough, wrinkly skin. I soon learn that his name is Rashad. His arms and legs fascinate me, for I have nothing but a head, a body, and a tail. I am a snake, and I would not want to be anything else.

Rashad carries me with him wherever he journeys, from his bed on the floor to the roads where other humans ride unicorns or walk. He always keeps me warm, for I hate the cold, be-cause it makes me sluggish.

A conservationist returns to her compound just after poachers have slaughtered everyone.

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Elena slapped a tree trunk for balance as she skidded past and flung herself down the faded trail to the lower stream. Her breath sobbed in her throat and hot tears threatened her vision.

They were close behind, but near the jackfruit tree she forced herself to a walk. She took small steps, rolling heel to toe, and counted the meter of “Rock-a-bye, Baby” as she stepped. She hesitated as she neared the rotting log and then veered to the right. Even in her haste—especially in her haste—Queenie was a safer bet than Elvis.
She glanced at the nearby mound and saw a telltale strip of olive-brown among the decomposing leaves. Nothing more. Her familiar tempo had bought her passage.

She veered left again, safely past the leaves and log, and reached the jackfruit tree. Its foliage was thin but with luck, she might go unnoticed among its enormous fruit. She hooked a leg over the lowest limb and wriggled as high as she trusted it.

She touched her phone, secure in its belt clip. It had no signal here, but she had to keep it close, for Dr. Morrison and Dr. Laghari.

She had been away when the poachers came.

A Rescue Operations robot must put its existence on the line to save a crew shipwrecked in space.

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The six-brace cargo vessel had been family’s livelihood. One wrong maneuver too near a planet’s gravity well, and it was fast becoming their graveyard.

SN127-AK3 hurtled across the empty kilometers of space between his home aboard a Rescue Operations starship and the six-brace, solar winds and the planet’s pull accelerating it faster than a human’s body could stand. He was a three-meter-long Rescue Ops Survival Servitor, a robot designed to contort itself into the tightest spaces of the most twisted wreckage. His body was 10 centimeters across, with a micro-armor surface covering self-repair systems, dozens of servos that let him twist into all manner of shapes, and delicate sensor arrays, as well as five storage compartments. Like standard ROSS units, he’d earned the sobriquet “space snake” from his biological directors, who like to replace the designation “Servitor” with “Serpent.”

Tucker and his friend go looking for a dangerous gang that might be able to help his grandma keep her house.

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“How much longer we gotta walk?”

“Just at the end of this alley.” Tucker tripped over a stray tin can but fought to find his balance before Benny saw.

“I still don’t see why we’re goin’ to see these guys.” Benny twisted his mouth like he smelled something rotten—which they both did, considering how much garbage they’d stumbled past.

Tucker resisted rolling his eyes. Benny was a full year younger than him, only ten. He sometimes still acted a whole lot like a baby.

“I told you, I gotta go. I don’t gotta choice.”

“Yeah, but The Snakes? Those guys are bad news, Tuck.

A police snake in a mechanized suit of armor faces a peculiar reaction from a hostage during a standoff.

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“Let the lady go, Thomas,” I say, my forearm cannon armed and pointed at the man in front of me. “My backup’s already on the way. You’ve got nowhere to run.”

Tom Crougar’s forehead, shoulders, and upper back are covered in jagged, bony protrusions, and a long bone blade extends from his right forearm to press against the neck of his unfortunate hostage.

“Not a chance, freak,” he sneers at me. “You let me walk, or I open her jugular.”

“You’re only wanted for robbery and grand theft auto, Tom,” I say directly. “Adding murder to the list will only make things worse for you.”

“I’ll die before I go back to the pen,” he insists. “You can’t make…”

“Um...excuse me?” the middle-aged woman in Tom’ grasp interrupts, looking at me. “I’m sorry, but...what are you?”

An up and coming fighter pilot, Dex D'Felco seeks glory as a Blood Ace in the depths of space.

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Dex D’Felco had every reason to feel good. His polished dress uniform shoes clicked smartly on the duranium deck plates of the United Coalition carrier Callisto as he navigated the thick press of the always-busy passageway. He nodded curtly to new subordinates making eye contact while smiling in acknowledgement to peers offering their congratulations. Typical of most Coalition Navy observances, Dex’s promotion ceremony had been short but meaningful.  Under the clear panoramic dome of the Callisto’s observation lounge—the pure white void of etherspace playing havoc on reality just beyond—he had stood at attention while Captain Anton Walters pinned the UCN Medal of Valor and a new gleaming gold bar to his uniform tunic. The recognition of Dex’s heroics in the Oranos engagement had only taken two weeks to clear the customary bureaucracy, and now it was official. Dex D’Felco, the pilot who had single-handedly saved a civilian light transport from six bandits, scoring kills on three hostile Razors in the process, was now a full-fledged lieutenant.

As Dex strode purposefully down the passageway, his friend, Lieutenant Hagen Lebrian, kept pace just behind him. Broad-shouldered and nearly two meters tall, he had to juke and jostle a little more than Dex to avoid the surge of pilots, deck sergeants, and support personnel all wanting to acknowledge the young hero.

​ ​ ​When the Dragon takes over St. Nick's operation at the North Pole, St. George intervenes

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“Name, please,” the figure in the helm rasped.

George had seen such helms before, of course, just not on minor bureaucrats. “George—Saint George, technically, but I don’t like to—”

“Neither do we. We don’t mind religion, you understand; Pharisees and Sadducees, so crunchy and…” The voice broke off abruptly, then resumed. “I mean, religion leads to lawsuits, you know.”

“Ah, yes. Well, I disagree, in fact, but lawsuits are distasteful.”

“No, no—they’re delicious! Pain and suffering, hatred, revenge…” Steam rose as drool fell. “It’s just so distracting.”​

In ancient Norway, Erik Lambskin the Viking is forced to foster a little girl.

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Norway, 1025 A.D.
 
I sat in the cold around a small fire. Alone. I kept the mead hall at my back. The biting cold blew hard, then abated. My strength, my sight and even my once keen hearing deteriorated in my old age, but I still heard cautious steps moving through the snow toward me.

I placed a casual hand on the hilt of my hunting knife. In one motion I unsheathed it, spinning around to meet my first attacker.

“Erik Lambskin, put that away. I’m not here to avenge myself on you.” Hilda Bearroll stood before me. She was old. Not quite as old as me, but time had not been kind to this once beautiful woman. Her hand rested on the handle of her dagger.

I sheathed my blade, turning my back on her and returning to my fire.

Shouting against the wind, still with my back to her, I said, “You should not be here. I have rejected the people’s will at the Thing. I am an outlaw. Someday one of you will come here to claim my lands, my weapons and what’s left of my treasure-horde, after they’ve claimed my life.”