To live in the world today means accepting horrors as a matter of course, and the narrator certainly does that. I wanted it to read as if it’s all a big metaphor for something, but leave the something mysterious. That’s often how dreams feel to me, and sometimes the world feels that way too.

The other part was the frustration many of us feel if we’re able to become pregnant and our period is late, or we’re trying not to get pregnant for whatever reasons—that frustration of having no certainty about your very own body, no way to tell what’s going on in there, and that at any time, that bodily autonomy can be taken away from you.

Being a teenager is horrifying! There is the horror of your body suddenly being outside of your control, for one, and it’s so messy and gross and bloody and smelly and hairy and you have all of these feelings, all without your consent.

Years ago I read that Bill Gates has a turn-of-the-century fully AI-enabled house. Everything in it is specialized for its inhabitants. I wondered: What if it was left empty? Alone. Without purpose.