I play tabletop role playing games, though that leads to a lot more writing, hah! I currently run two concurrent campaigns—one Blades in the Dark, and one VtM, on alternate weekends, and guide my players through a play-by-post campaign set alongside the main campaign during the week.

The mechas in this story were extremely inspired by Neon Genesis Evangelion, an anime which has also driven a lot of my past writing. The mechas in Evangelion (spoiler) must be implanted with a core containing the soul of the pilot’s mother in order to function properly.

This was the story I wrote … while quarantining after traveling back to my hometown in Kerala, India. I remember that I was trying to challenge myself to write a chaotic, peopled world full of sensations that were in direct opposition to the sterile confines of my room.

I wrote the first draft of this story in late 2022, a few months after the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, effectively removing the nationwide right to abortion. Around that time, my first kid had just turned one, and I was feeling retrospective about that first insane year of parenthood. I was also starting to debate whether I wanted to have a second kid and go through the nightmare that is pregnancy again, especially in the aforementioned political reality.

“Over a Long Time Ago” is part of a series of short stories centered on an interstellar penal colony called Amends. In the series chronology it’s the second story, though I wrote it next to last. The story’s title is a line from a great Steely Dan song, “Pretzel Logic,” this wonky blues ballad about time travel. There’s this sad feeling of inevitability to the song that I hope to evoke in readers, which is a totally appropriate emotional tone.