I knew I wanted to write something about the Large Hadron Collider, this inconceivably huge and important thing that might change the world, and relate it back to these small decisions made by individuals. And I wanted to write about a relationship between two trans people. I started with this image that is very much rooted in my relationship with this friend. I borrowed his postcards and his laugh. Though it diverged from there.

Go suggested itself at first because, unlike chess, modern day computers don’t play it very well. (I should point out here that I play even worse.) This is, in part, because Go has a huge state space. To me, plays in Go can feel rather subtle. Placing a stone off by a point can have drastic ramifications. A fight on one side of the board may affect the situation on the other side of the board. There’s a lot to keep track of.

Since I was quite young, I have had this sense that the fourth-dimensional universe we inhabit is a kind of conjuror’s trick, especially the part about sequential time. If we could see reality as it is, rather than how we’re merely wired to experience it, we’d say, “Oh, well, of course.” Back when I used to take LSD, that sense was reinforced, because I got to see mundane objects in all their actual splendor. The feeling has stuck with me for almost fifty years now.

It’s so odd to sit here, remembering my half-self writing characters like Kris and Max, who seemed impossibly ancient then but now feel like contemporaries. It’s more depressing to see how many of the themes of this story are still current: the consequences of environmental degradation and war, patriarchy and the violent means it pursues to retain power, the costs of survival . . . I guess it’s the last that has stuck with me down the years, from the older Hogarth’s perspective.