Last year, my sister fell victim to a ransomware virus that caused her to lose a lot of important files, including irreplaceable photos. Some of my recent stories have involved brain implant technology, so I started thinking about what ransomware would look like in a future in which such technology is a part of everyday life. You could look at it as a cautionary tale, but I didn’t write it with that intention.

I wrote this story for the Datlow/Windling anthology SIRENS. They wanted an erotic story and, though I always do what Ellen and Terri tell me to, I’m not exactly a writer of erotic stories. To be honest, they make me blush. Bawdy stories, in an Elizabethan vein, were another pair of shoes. A PhD in Non-Shakespearean Renaissance Drama had left me (among other things) with a copy of Shakespeare’s BAWDY, a facsimile of Robert Greene’s THE ART OF CONNY-CATCHING, and a knack for writing Elizabethan prose. I figured I might as well get some use out of them.

I saw a news article going around Facebook about a young black woman who was fighting to be named valedictorian of her graduating class. She had the highest GPA—but a group of parents and school administrators was pulling shenanigans to deny her the honor, changing the rules and so forth. She was enduring some harassment from her classmates and even death threats, but she was still fighting—and thing was, she already had a standing early-admission acceptance to a very good college on scholarship.

On any given weekday, my alarm clock goes off at 4:00 a.m. so that I can get up and write before going to my day job. I don’t actually get up at 4:00. I usually hit snooze for a couple of hours until I have to get up, shower, and go to work for nine to twelve hours, then come home too tired to do anything but have dinner and fall asleep on the couch with my dinner plate on my chest and contact lenses still stuck to my eyes. So, my typical writing day doesn’t involve any writing at all, unfortunately. An atypical writing day would be me actually writing.

Currently we take it for granted that science and technology must advance at the cost of the environment and the poor, to the point where we are hardly aware of these costs unless we hear about a sweatshop in China manufacturing parts for our gizmos, or some mining disaster in a conveniently remote part of the globe. To me, it is not progress if it destroys people, communities, and the environment. If development is achieved through destruction, as in the current model, shouldn’t we critique it and look for alternatives?

In the story, I got interested in trying to imagine a way of looking at the world that was different from my own, the result of the character’s early blindness and his highly developed internal labyrinth. In the real world, he is not interested in content, or cause and effect, but only form. In a way, this allows him to protect himself from the trauma of observing misery and violence, because he is able to stay resolutely on the surface.

I was thinking about the nature of liars, how they often get away with it by spoon-feeding people stories a little at a time, and the lengths they’ll go to to preserve that fiction as truth. Some of the best liars use sweet words as a lure; they tell people what they want to hear and believe, and they do it in such a way that their sincerity is never doubted. (At least not until it begins to fall apart, as all lies eventually do.)

I also searched for blog posts from veterans and active duty soldiers about the experience of PTSD. Some of them are very frank, such as with that concept of never feeling safe, always thinking about the exits. I’m grateful that veterans and currently serving soldiers are being more open about their experiences; it’s important for civilians to understand these things, because we’ve frankly been failing pathetically when it comes to our responsibility to those who have served and are serving.