I was also thinking of a great line from a Utah Phillips bit: “Make a break for it, kids. Flee into the wilderness. The one within, if you can find it.” The combination of that line and the thought of a volcano that no one noticed coalesced nicely. The sex part is there because, I dunno, sex is pretty interesting? Like most people, I think about it a bunch.

The thing I really hoped for with this story was to convey the emotional life of a person who might engage in a loving relationship with multiple versions of themselves, the efforts they might go to in order to preserve that relationship, and the personal cost of it all going horribly wrong. Which seemed likely to me. Relationships are fragile enough even between two very similar people.

The kid version of stories about running away to join the circus is almost always a morality tale, not a heroic journey. Frankly, the adult version is, too. You’re not supposed to leave things behind, not in this culture of holding onto what you’ve got. You’re emphatically not supposed to leave people behind. I wanted to write a kind of American, lost, fucked-up person on the run story.

I don’t think I would consider cryonic suspension unless I was dying of an illness that I hoped they could cure in the future—I imagine there would be a huge likelihood of something going wrong and a ton of people dying before they ever woke up. I guess there would have to be pretty impressive proof that the process was safe, before I would consider doing it.

When you watch Lord of the Rings, you get goosebumps and awe at the epic battle scenes, but it’s Frodo who makes you cry, who scrapes your heart against a cheese grater. I love the tight focus in the midst of something huge and world-encompassing, because it would be easy to write a story about the dragons destroying everything.

Language doesn’t come to me. I choose it, carefully, to reflect the kind of story I’m writing. I went to a very old-fashioned school, back in the day, where we were taught to write by copying models of classical prose. Somewhere in my papers are my Addison and Steele essay, my Francis Bacon essay, my A.A. Milne story, my E.R. Edison story, and others I have thankfully forgotten.