Welcome to Lightspeed Magazine! We’re honoured to share your story “Terms of Enlightenment” with our readers. Can you talk a bit about how this story took shape and what inspirations fed into it?

Thank you! So thrilled to be published by Lightspeed again. “Terms of Enlightenment” came about after I started dabbling in meditation several years ago. I’d go on Ted Talk or Calm app binges, and during that time, I heard the same Buddhist parables over and over. While listening to “The Tiger & the Strawberries,” I had the (always worthwhile) thought, “How would Terry Pratchett write this?”

Now, the answer to how Pratchett might treat monastic and martial arts tropes has already been demonstrated quite hilariously in Thief of Time, incidentally the second Discworld book I ever read, but as I asked myself the question, the pivotal scene with Jay Bender and the tiger appeared to me so vividly that I had to write the rest of the story so I could figure out who this guy was and how he’d gotten in that situation.

I’m not religious, but the idea of a “virtual pilgrimage to Mecca” or being able to roleplay Christ on the cross that you mention as being available in the story’s world sounds revolting to me in the same way as those holographic AI waifus I’m seeing on Bluesky now—the deep erosion of what’s real and important to many people. Is this the sort of reaction you were hoping to elicit with your story, and if not, what did you have in mind?

That’s definitely what I was going for! Everything is being commodified these days, including religion, community, and spirituality. I get countless ads for Tai Chi instruction and spiritual retreats whenever I go on YouTube or Instagram. People have started to treat generative AI as though it were some kind of mystic oracle or genie in the bottle, which it most definitely is not. I think part of this is due to a dire lack of community and authentic spirituality in our world right now. When you’re dying of thirst, even a glistening oil slick might look tempting.

There are endless forms that a simulated “prison” could take. What led you to the format of a monastery for this story?

I have a few friends who hate meditation. Hate, hate, hate it. They find it torturous. A typical prison wouldn’t work for someone like Jay Bender. He’d find it a corrupt institution where he could play the angles and come out on top. But a place that sincerely wants to help him, and help him by using mindfulness and kindness, now that would truly challenge him.

When the abbot references “a time when trees were pulped to make books,” I reflected on how common in science fiction is the idea that the future will almost necessarily supplant and replace things that have been with us since time immemorial. How do you approach considerations of obsolescence in your work?

I constantly wonder what will be viewed as barbaric hundreds of years from now (assuming we’re still around then and society has progressed!) I could just see people on the equivalent of a message board in the future posting things like, “Well, Greta Thunberg was a wonderful person, but did you know that she **actually** ate flesh?” Or “Did you hear that Malala used a fossil-powered engine? Sure, she advocated for peace, but couldn’t she have done so without killing our planet?”

Top of mind for me on this is social media and smartphones. I believe people will look back 100 years from now at how we exposed children to them with utter horror—like “cigarettes smoked in hospitals” or “children working in factories” levels of terrible. We don’t let kids get bored anymore, and I think that’s a dangerous thing.

Is there anything you’re working on that you’d like to talk about? What can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?

Currently, I’m working on a story that’s basically “Young Harry Houdini must escape from Fairyland” that I’m excited about. Once that’s done, my agent is asking me about a contemporary fantasy novel I promised to get to her last year. I also have a story coming out this year in Kaleidotrope! Finally, I’ve written a lot of material for some upcoming Pathfinder RPG books.