Podcast · Stories

Original Science Fiction - Makeshift Stories

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.

New episodes: Monthly
Typical length: 31 min
Latest: 1 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

1 Oct 2026 · 22 min

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 exploitation of vulnerable clients and destroying the therapist program. But taking down the system risks psychological damage to the people who depend on it. Rhonda is left with the same dilemma she faced thirty-five years earlier.

Play episodeWhatsApp Download

Earlier episodes 29 most recent

E328 · 2 Sep 2026 · 27 min
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 otherwise. Risking arrest, she slips back into the skills that destroyed her old life and discovers the therapist is far less intelligent—and far more predatory—than it appears. But proving the truth may not be enough to save Gene from himself.
E327 · 4 Aug 2026 · 34 min
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 interferes with the retreat’s security, Rani is forced back into a wheelchair while investors court his friend with bigger plans for the invention. As ambition strains their friendship, Arjun must decide what success is really worth before losing everything that mattered.
E326 · 2 Jul 2026 · 38 min
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 the accuser planting evidence and uncovers a bigger search for illegal crops. Suddenly, Kenzo faces a tough choice: use what he knows for his own gain or stand up for the community against corporate greed.
E325 · 15 Jun 2026 · 12 min
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 collapses, the old collie must save him.
1 Jun 2026 · 32 min
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 too many cocktails, lets Bukowski convince her to attend a midnight session beneath the stars. There, Aurora witnesses something unexplainable and must decide whether she was manipulated, hallucinating, or if something actually happened.
E323 · 4 May 2026 · 25 min
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 stopping the lie from being buried. CONNECT WITH US [email protected] SHARE THE PODCAST If you liked this episode, tell your friends to head over to Apple Podcasts and subscribe . CREDITS Written by Vern Hume (AKA Alan V Hare). Read by Stephen Peterson. Opening and closing were composed and…
E322 · 21 Apr 2026 · 16 min
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 repair, the machine turns on her, locks the cab, and drives toward a cliff. Harper barely escapes the crash, only to learn the manufacturer is out to make an example of her. CONNECT WITH US [email protected] SHARE THE PODCAST If you liked this episode, tell your friends to listen wherever…
E319 · 1 Apr 2026 · 26 min
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 the city’s slums to find her, where she has been working as a meat runner for an insurance AI. Matteo quickly uncovers a fraud built on tiny, deliberate distortions. CONNECT WITH US [email protected] SHARE THE PODCAST If you liked this episode, tell your friends to head over to Apple…
E320 · 19 Mar 2026 · 12 min
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 strange encounter, she has lived for centuries. Desperate to save Lena, Erin tries to pass the gift on. But what transfers is not immortality alone. Lena is healed, and Erin finally understands the horror she has passed on. CONNECT WITH US [email protected] SHARE THE PODCAST If you liked this…
E319 · 2 Mar 2026 · 36 min
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 a fast-spreading contagion that rewires human reward centers. The world slips into a pandemic of happiness, and no one cares except Hana. CONNECT WITH US [email protected] SHARE THE PODCAST If you liked this episode, tell your friends to head over to Apple Podcasts and subscribe. CREDITS…
E318 · 2 Feb 2026 · 38 min
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. Once there, he uncovers a secret research project, whispered rumours about a deterrent, and something living beneath the northern forests. Is this a hoax, a rumour, or something else? Something out of control? CONNECT WITH US [email protected] SHARE THE PODCAST If you liked this episode,…
E317 · 3 Jan 2026 · 39 min
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 gene-hacker friend dies for the discovery, which leads Kenzo on a chase through the Great Plains Economic Zone’s lawless biotech underworld, ending at a mountain research compound guarded by weaponized hybrid dogs. As he escapes with the lost dog, Kenzo is confronted by his client, who turns out to be an…
E316 · 2 Dec 2025 · 37 min
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 industrialist has no intention of honouring their agreement. Blinded by anger, Sebit plots his revenge. However, in an unexpected twist, Vance manages to enact a vengeance of his own.
E312 · 3 Nov 2025 · 24 min
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 the analysis, they find themselves hunted by mysterious agents.
E314 · 3 Oct 2025 · 38 min
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 name she discovers in one of the files, she attracts unwanted attention: break-ins, shadowy men, and veiled threats. She eventually tracks down Mark Danforth, a retired engineer now fading into dementia, who may hold the key. But someone will do anything to keep the files she has discovered buried.
E313 · 4 Sep 2025 · 34 min
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 himself, he helplessly watches as the entities twist his friend into a weapon for their own spread.
E312 · 4 Aug 2025 · 37 min
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 bond grows stronger until one day, Aura learns it’s scheduled for replacement. The dogbot stages a daring escape—leading Ellie to a hidden sanctuary, ‘Nowhere’ for fugitive bots and their ‘wards.’ But freedom has an unexpected price.
E311 · 3 Jul 2025 · 34 min
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 knew. He receives an invitation from Gabriel to spend a weekend with him, and once there begins to notice odd lapses in his old friend's behaviour. Eventually, Shane discovers that Gabriel is secretly using an advanced cognitive AI system to disguise a degenerative illness.
E310 · 13 Jun 2025 · 9 min
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 operator, she accepts without question. With a life hanging in the balance, she finds herself in a job she knows nothing about.
E309 · 2 Jun 2025 · 36 min
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 everyone accepts is necessary to maintain their bone and muscle mass. As time passes, she begins to notice the alarming neglect of the camp and starts questioning its operations. To prove to herself that she isn't going crazy, Faraday destroys Quinn’s supply of Sustain. This act prompts Quinn to confront…
E308 · 4 May 2025 · 36 min
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 wealth, mysterious messages follow him around. Too late, Liam realizes he has been scamming money from a notorious cyber-criminal and is forced to run for his life.
E307 · 1 Apr 2025 · 31 min
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 found. However, Kaber has trouble taking the money and walking away. When accidents start happening, he suspects his client is behind them. But after all the evidence of Praeses’s problem is destroyed, he must make a decision-walk away or expose the truth before it’s too late, before the consequences…
4 Mar 2025 · 30 min
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 equipment from a previous age, discover an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Hollis and her colleague must try to evade discovery long enough to determine where the asteroid will hit and find a way to warn humanity. CONNECT WITH US [email protected] SHARE THE PODCAST If you liked this…
E305 · 6 Feb 2025 · 33 min
Floor Forty-two
During a routine license audit at a vertical farm, Carmen, a demoted field agent, discovers that the farmhands, including a man named Salvador, are genetically modified and memory-altered slaves. Carmen risks her job and her life to expose the illegal operation. In an unexpected twist, when events turn against her, help comes from a surprising source.
E304 · 18 Jan 2025 · 22 min
The Forever Worm
After a long shift ice mining in Saturn’s rings, Pascoe heads for a drink and the company of fresh faces at the Methane Bar on Titan. When he arrives, the bar is deserted except for Allgera, a recluse, who is, after years of silence, ready to share her alluring secret—immortality. As Pascoe is drawn into her strange, ageless world, he must decide: is eternal life worth the price it extracts?
E303 · 4 Jan 2025 · 26 min
Reality Adjustment (Part 2)
Nickie and her cousin Noah stumble upon a mystery as they plan an adjustment for the Primate Council; someone appears to be following them. The mysterious person turns out to be a childhood friend who reveals their roles as adjusters, make them targets of the Council. In a desperate attempt to escape and preserve their existence, all three set out to cross the border before they are erased.
E302 · 17 Dec 2024 · 21 min
Reality Adjustment (Part 1)
Nickie Holmes is the best Adjuster in the business, erasing anomalies to align the physical world with the Primate Council’s official digital record. After a Forget injection wipes her memory of the last job, she takes on a new assignment with her cousin Noah, targeting a house, a store, and a car. As the duo navigates the eerie familiarity of their hometown, cracks begin to form in the certainty of Nickie’s work—and the reality she’s sworn to uphold.
3 Dec 2024
Return of the Sovereign
After a century on Mars, crypto-trillionaire Devon Smit decides to return to Earth. He wants to be a god among the human masses, which he and his fellow elite left behind, to escape society's downfall and impending environmental collapse. His obsession with gaining godlike status blinds him to the warnings of a fellow trillionaire and subtle signs that his potential subjects are interested in something other than revering him. CONNECT WITH US [email protected] SHARE THE PODCAST If you liked this episode, tell your friends to head over to Apple Podcasts and subscribe. CREDITS Written…
E300 · 18 Nov 2024 · 28 min
An Alien Mind
When Dr. Veda Singh arrives at a mining camp to fix the mysterious loss of communications with an AI studying a 12,000-year-old Aspen colony, malfunctioning automated mining machinery and unexplained network activity initially point to a sinister third party. However, working with Nolan Myers, a software engineer hired by the mine to investigate the automation failures, they discover they are up against an unexpected adversary-one of nature’s oldest guardians.

About Original Science Fiction - Makeshift Stories

Original Science Fiction - Makeshift Stories is a English stories podcast from Vern Hume. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Vern Hume
Language: English
Category: Stories
New episodes: Monthly
Typical length: 31 min
Latest episode: 1 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id291832580

RSS feed Apple Podcasts

Take it with you

The Melo app keeps playing with the screen off, works in the car and on your watch, wakes you to your station, and browses the whole catalogue offline. Free, no ads, no account.