Can you tell us a bit about what inspired you to write this story?

I was experimenting with unusual POVs as part of a personal writing exercise. This story was one of the successful results. I tried to write a story from a sort of hive mind POV but I didn’t want to write about insects so I played with the idea of making it a fleet of abandoned ships instead.

I am so fascinated with the voice of the story which is constantly teetering on being sarcastic and factual. How did you arrive at this voice?

The ships are not human. Their first language isn’t English or any human language. They are mostly telepathic, so everything in the story are their unfiltered thoughts. A human narrator might differentiate between thoughts and even hold back some information from the reader. The ships “say” it as they see it. This is more evident in some areas more than others. For example, their unchanging reverence for creators who abandoned them. They are infinitely smarter than the human rocket scientists but emotionally on the level of infants.

Why use “we” and not “I”? Do you think this choice changes the affect of the story significantly as it becomes a meta-narrative about how humans think about technology?

The whole point was to write from a combined perspective. For this story in particular, I think limiting the narrator to just one of the ships would not have enough emotional impact. Of course, the thoughts of ships created by a race advanced enough to attempt solar voyage would be different from that of humans. To these ships and their makers, humanity’s most advanced inventions were like high school science projects.

Why end it with flight?

It is a fulfilment of purpose, in a way. That is what these ships were made for. It is also a path to salvation for the stranded humans. After waiting for countless years, the ships could finally travel in space like they were meant to. Also, after searching for a long time, the humans finally found a way to travel faster and farther than ever before in the search for a new Earth.

Is there a project you are currently working on? And if not, are there any themes, objects, or news that might be tickling your fingers?

There are always several short stories lying around uncompleted in my Docs and I’m currently working on a couple of longer projects. Recently, I’ve been thinking of a way to add themes relating to math to my stories. I’ve had some success but I feel a breakthrough coming and this might change how and what I write in the future.