The initial framework for this story came from me thinking about the Little Mermaid fairy tale and wondering what her story would look like if turning into a human wasn’t a deal or a choice but rather a transformation she was always destined to go through. How would that gradual change play out and affect her, her family and community? I had also been thinking about the old movie: Creature from the Black Lagoon and how poignant the underwater scenes in that movie are. The creature is such a lonely figure and his loneliness comes across without any words.

Food replicators have always bothered me. I get that for us to enjoy watching a bunch of people who are actually on a soundstage pretend they’re traveling through space, we have to shorthand a few technological advances—artificial gravity and inertial dampeners come to mind—but instant food on demand is the only thing that nobody ever really tries to explain, and the one that most functions like magic. I decided I wanted to work out how a scientific explanation for the replicators would actually play out.

The seed this story sprang from was a question I asked myself: what would a coffin look like to immortals who had never experienced death but were about to? Throughout human history, we’ve had myriad answers for how to honor our dead and what to do with their remains. As this story started sprouting from that first question, I wanted to challenge myself on a worldbuilding and narrative level. Why have these people never died before? What exactly has brought about death for the first time in their history?

For inspiration, I definitely had thoughts of the Alien-style “workforce in space” undertones (though with decidedly less acidic drippings in my result). I like the idea of a person just trying to carry out a normal life in space, and the economies that crop up in that “landscape.” I thought of how tired that person might get with so much darkness stretching between them and the nearest human. How burnt out on the daily grind. How old they could feel while still so young. And—depending on the profession they took up—how chronic injuries might be a huge part of their life.

I often draw from the Russian folklore I grew up hearing, and with this particular story wanted to try working with an invented myth rather than an established one. Lake Baikal is of course a real place, and one that’s special and fascinating to me, as I have family living in the nearby city of Irkutsk and visited occasionally as a child. The seals, or nerpa, endemic to the lake are real as well, and though some mystery surrounds them—like how they came to be there in the first place—the queen and her mythology aren’t part of that mystery (not in our world anyway).

I am a multi-instrumentalist (acoustic and electric guitar, keys, drums and bass). I’m also trying to learn the saxophone. I used to make beats but haven’t had time for that in a while. I’m one of those outlier writers who can never write to music because then my music brain kicks in and I’ll spend the session analysing the vocal harmonies, chord progressions, and key changes that I won’t be able to focus on writing. So I write in silence.

In the months before drafting “SyncALife,” I experienced a loss that made me think about how easy it is to fondly remember a loved one, but miles more difficult to discuss the harm they might have caused in their lifetimes. This felt especially true of men—and paternal figures—who seem to receive more grace when it comes to their shortcomings. This story was a way of exploring the long-term effects of hypermasculinity.

I was playing Skyrim again and having fun reading all the books. It sort of clicked in my head that maybe what this story was lacking was the “in world” texts . . . so I started with one, and then it just expanded wildly from there and the connected narratives of identity and representation and connection all gelled in my head. Also, I have always wanted an excuse to write a video game cut scene.

Alas, this story originated with life and death. You can see that I am the viewpoint character, and that the drama taking place in the foreground is the events concurrent with the sudden illness and untimely death of my wife Judi. I wish the story hadn’t originated, but we can’t always get what we want. It is the second, and I hope final, story specifically driven by this loss.

When I was about thirteen, a group of us went camping in someone’s cow pasture. There was a murky pond where we swam and fished. I waded deep into the dark, fish-reeking water, up to my throat, when my feet touched something sharp in the mud. I stepped back, but I found more hard edges, coated in slime. Probing around with my feet, horror and disgust broke over me when I realized where I was.