HARDWIRED

Author's thoughts [Spoiler alert!]

SPOILER ALERT! Don't read this if you don't want to spoil the story. Or read the story first before reading this.

                   -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sci-fi films have always fascinated me because I am curious to see how they will depict the future. I also love reading the sci-fi short stories or novels where some films came from. But when I started getting exposed to another type of genre, speculative fiction, that somehow mixed sci-fi with some magic realism, mythology and fantasy elements -- and everything in between, as some specfic anthology editors said -- I loved that genre even more.

I've always toyed with the idea of writing my own sci-fi stuff before. I've written several speculative fiction stories and even film screenplays even before I discovered what specfic is. So I guess I was on the right track that early and I didn't realize it yet.

This story popped out of my brain at the last month of 2011 (yes, I record when the concepts come to me). During that time, it was 15 months after a huge heartbreak, and also 6 months after a brief but meaningful affair. That affair was ripe with feminist and philosophical discourses, and it jumpstarted me since I've been unconsciously shunning away from relationships with women who are my intellectual equals, as my good friend told me. That brief affair also turned sour eventually, and it was during that time when I wrote this story. I guess my real life's state of mind affects my fictional world's state of being.

I also wanted to play with the idea that the beginning of this story is about abortion, but it turns out that the woman is trying to abort something else, not a baby in her tummy. So I teamed this with the main concept of the story: questioning how we humans seem to be "hardwired" in finding love, being in love, and programmed to be miserable when we have no romantic love in our life. In short, bitterocampo lola mo when I wrote this hehe. :) So naturally, I wanted this love wiring to be removed from my being. And I put that in the character of this story.

I never went back to rewrite that earlier portion as I've been meaning to, so I'm not sure if it was successful or not as I haven't had this piece workshopped by fellow writer friends as I sometimes do. Misleading intentions is a strategy of fiction writing. And since I was beginning to revisit fiction writing again during that time -- after leaving it for a long, long time -- this story might appear unpolished. Nevertheless, I'd like to share it in this space.

Feel free to give some feedback. Don't worry, I'm tough. I'm a veteran of creative writing workshops so I can handle it. :) Ang pikon, talo.

Thanks for reading.