One of the workshop stipulations in my last UBC fiction course was that there should be no genre fiction. This blanket statement was put out there I believe to staunch fan fiction, or anything crassly plagiaristic. This story tries to skirt around brands like that, but still be hyper-stylized fiction, filled with ingredients that approach, but never fall squarely on cliche. I spent a lot of time on the style of the piece—more so than on figuring out what was going to happen with the story. It was supposed to be one of those grand-concept science fictions that twist hard at the end, but I realized about 90% of the way through that I hadn’t yet decided what this amazing twist was supposed to be. In fact, all I really knew was that I wanted there to be one, and I wanted it to be hard.
The result is that it loses some momentum at the end—but it’s got so much to begin with. An experiment in versatility.
