I happened on a reality-style PBS show where they send people to live in some past time period. This one was set in Victorian slums. As I watched, it became clear that we haven’t evolved at all in how we treat those in poverty, not to mention the way we trap generations of people in debt. It was depressing and rage-inducing. So debt became an organizing idea that sparked a new take on my junker story. My salvager guy transformed into someone with much more at stake.

I’m a visual writer, and writing for me is typically recording what I see in my mind’s eye. With this story, the opening scene is actually what came first; I found the image of an old man made of wood sitting on a balcony quite striking. I knew right away that he was waiting for something, for someone. But the reason he had traveled so far, his backstory, everything that had brought him up to that moment eluded me.

When writing future scenarios I do keep in mind how fast technology is changing, but how slow human feelings and behavior change in comparison. Technology is going faster and faster, and I don’t think our interactions and feelings can keep up; by the time we’ve figured out one way of using a certain advancement, it seems as if a new one is already here. We sometimes speak as if technology is going to resolve the issues we have as a society and in most cases, I think technology just makes it clearer where the system is the weakest.

My experience in medicine has definitely informed much of the dynamic. It’s a high-stress, high-stakes, highly hierarchical environment. There’s four years of medical school and then three to ten years of residency (depending on the specialty) and the whole process is working your way up the totem pole. My protagonist is in her last year of residency and a big part of her identity has become being a leader in the hospital, being highly reliable, and being able to help people.