The seed of the idea came, appropriately enough, when we were contemplating the process of collaboration. It occurred to us that, when writing a tale together, we were in effect inhabiting one mind . . . We can’t recall who exactly it was who had the original idea inspired by that insight, but we batted it around as we do, then got stuck in. Eric began the tale, did a couple of thousand words, then passed it on to Keith to finish. There was little plotting done between us—we simply let our respective subconscious minds take the idea where it would go.

The original inspiration for the island came from a Smithsonian Magazine article about North Brother Island, which is located between Manhattan and the Bronx. It was once the location of Riverside Hospital, designed to contain smallpox and other infectious diseases in the late nineteenth century. The island got repurposed a few times over the years, becoming housing for war veterans and later a rehab center for heroin addicts. Then, it was abandoned in 1963 and has since become a place reclaimed by nature.

I’ve been really into establishing “space habitat folklore,” and gremlins are a big part of that. My gremlins are inspired by the originals—the ones that would go around causing malfunctions in airplanes, and in an off-Earth habitat where your survival is dependent on all your machines working well, gremlins would be a natural way to explain random malfunctions. The gremlin trap is a bit of worldbuilding that I’ve had in my back pocket for a while. The idea here is that Martian kids build these traps as a way to learn basic mechanical principles.

This story started with the title. It was just a phrase that popped into my head one day and became a brain worm of sorts. I had no story, no character, and no setting for it, but those two words felt like they had a lot of potential. It was also around this time that my mom was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and her condition made apparent to me the connection between our memories and how they coalesce to create who we are. Anything affecting these memories fundamentally alters the self, however the “self” might be conceived.