We’re so happy to be able to bring your fabulous story, “The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strain’d” to our readers. The details of the story along with the crisp sentences make it such a wonderful read. What inspired you to have this “love story” take place in the year 3048?

It’s interesting that you began the interview with this question, since the first draft of my story didn’t have a particular date or time period mentioned, and some of my beta-readers were rather insistent on knowing which century the story took place in, haha! I knew I wanted the story to take place in the future—distant enough to feel sufficiently SF-nal in an “outer space travel is within our grasp” sort of way but not so distant that the engines of corporate capitalism and neo-colonization (that are already turning our present into a dystopia) are utterly unrecognizable. While the exact year was an arbitrary choice, I hoped that by beginning the story somewhere in the mid-31st century, it would be easier to speculate just how much worse our capitalist and extractivist cultures could get, especially for marginalized folks. Of course, it’s bad enough already but I suppose the cynic in me (partially inspired by the workplace horror anecdotes I keep hearing from friends slaving away at unfulfilling corporate jobs) wanted to dial it up further.

What was the most challenging aspect of writing this story?

Figuring out the point-of-view, tense, and pacing was definitely the hardest part for me. The actual plot of the story didn’t change much from one draft to another but I kept rearranging paragraphs and rewriting them in first, second, and third person to figure out which “voice” worked best, until I finally settled on the second person singular. The story was initially written in third person and our main character had a name (Scal) but I thought there was a disconnect between the character and the reader, so I finally switched to second person present. Fingers crossed that it worked!

I am very curious about so many things here from technology to family, extraction to exile, and, of course, love. The droid becomes the interface with which the protagonist interacts in order to unfold all these themes. What made you choose this whole idea of the protagonist revealing themselves to the droid?

I wanted the scenes to be something between a confessional and a conversation, but veering heavily towards the former, since the droid for the most part, does not and cannot communicate using the conventional signifiers of language. The initial ideas for this tale came to me in early 2021, during the pandemic-enforced lockdowns—a deeply isolating period where apart from my close family, I hadn’t seen any friends or acquaintances in months. I mean, I’ve always had an unfortunate habit of talking to people (both real and imaginary) in my head, but during that time, I was thinking a lot about social distancing, touch starvation, and the melancholy that comes from feeling that you’re not really a part of a “community” in a tangible sense (of course, Discord watch-parties and video calls/texts both alleviated and exacerbated that curious sense of isolation), and all of that bled into this idea of a lonely, over-worked and extremely depressed character who is so desperate for companionship—not in a typical romantic sense, but more out of a desire to talk to someone, anyone—that he projects all of that onto this droid.

Solitude can be lovely, of course, but I think long periods of socially-sanctioned isolation are actually inimical to our health and well-being, as we saw with the whole switch to the WFH model during the height of the pandemic where you’re basically trapped in the same few rooms for months on end, your close family or friends could get sick or be hospitalized any moment, and if they die, you’ll have to attend their funeral over Skype—all the while working longer and longer hours for ruthless CEOs who see you as an easily replaceable cog in the machine. So, in a way, the lifestyle changes that the COVID-19 pandemic brought about informed the structure of this tale where the MC is basically narrating his life story to a droid and consequently, develops a deep, emotional attachment to it.

I can’t help but wonder why the jump in the years at the end. What do you hope people arrive at from that ending besides the interpretation they bring to it?

Well, I don’t want to sound too prescriptive as I merely wanted to play around with our sense of time—how time can feel frustratingly short and also painfully long, depending on the circumstances—and that the MC’s relationship with the droid isn’t something that spans a few months or years, but entire centuries, to heighten the realization that if corporates claim to care about your health, it’s only to extract more “work hours” from you and that if we ever have enough scientific breakthroughs to drastically increase one’s life-span, it will most certainly be co-opted by companies to improve the productivity of their employees without any regards to their well-being. Essentially, there’s no compassion under capitalism except for the small kindnesses we choose to offer each other.

What is something you are afraid of but also hopeful about in relation to the distant future?

Oh gosh, it feels scary to even be hopeful about the distant future, especially because I sometimes wonder if there will even be a “distant” future for humanity, with the devastating consequences of climate change already unfolding in certain parts of the globe and the multiple ongoing genocides that are being livestreamed into our devices all day! It’s certainly not been easy to watch the world get worse and worse, such as the rising influence of right-wing governments in my country (and elsewhere) to say the very least. In fact, I’m typing this in the middle of a horrific heatwave summer—a heatwave that has already claimed at least two hundred lives so far, and one that disproportionately affects the lower castes and classes, and yet the government refuses to acknowledge this climate emergency while the upper classes remain complacent inside their apartments with their still-functional air-conditioning units. But despite the inequality and injustice, I’d like to believe there’s still time, that with enough cooperation and empathy we might be able to build a more sustainable society together—though whether you can call that hope or a delusion, I’m not sure. I wish I could be a more optimistic person, sigh.

What are you working on now, and are there any other projects we can look forward to seeing from you in the future? So excited about all of your upcoming work.

As a full-time freelance writer, editor, artist and occasional fortune-teller who regrets all her life choices, I’m well aware that I’m committing the classic mistake of juggling several projects at once, all in varying stages of completion—a process made even slower when you have to contend with the usual, systemic perils of a shaky freelancing career while being based in the Global South, along with certain invisible disabilities, especially untreated ADHD, lol. But writerly whining aside, do keep an eye out on my socials for new announcements, especially if you’re interested in my non-fiction work, as I regularly review the latest SFF books (and the occasional film, video game, or web series) for various outlets, including Strange Horizons and Locus Magazine.

At the time of writing this, I have a sapphic horror novelette called “The Summoning” detailing the toxic and complicated friendship between two girls attending a boarding school, out in Haunted Hallways, an interconnected dark academia anthology edited by May Celeste, published by Outland Entertainment earlier this year. I was very recently surprised and immensely thrilled to learn I’m an Ignyte Award finalist for the Critics Award—voting is open to the public till the end of August.

I also interview Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld about the threat of generative AI and its impact on SFF publishing and beyond, in Deep Dream—a timely and remarkable anthology that imagines the future of art, edited by Indrapramit Das, as part of MIT Press’s Twelve Tomorrows series. This one comes out in October 2024, but you can pre-order it now, if it piques your interest!