We’ve all had at least one. Or two. Or several. You meet someone and you get nearly instantly hooked, despite all logic or reasoning. Yet you know, for reasons beyond your control, that it can never ever be.

The impossible crush. Sometimes the only possible thing you can do is to get as far away from it, however possible.

That’s what I tried to portray in my story, The Only Possible Thing, recently published on James Gunn’s Ad Astra, a website dedicated to sci-fi-themed speculative fiction.

This universal quandary was just one inspiration for this story. The second was the amazing novella by Ted Chiang, The Story of Your Life. It’s about a linguist who struggles to communicate with aliens. In the process, her conception of time is disrupted. Rather than experiencing time as a linear construct, she experiences it as a simultaneous occurrence. If this sounds familiar, it’s because the novella was adapted into the movie The Arrival.

I’ve always had a hard…uh…time with time. Yes, I experience it in a linear fashion, but on an emotional level, things that happened in the past often seem more present than the present, to the point where I sometimes feel my life as existing on a broad plan that stretches out rather than a taut line. Chiang’s story spoke to me, and I wanted to blend his motif with my emotional concept of time and the futility of an impossible crush that sends you to the farthest reaches of the universe where you confront not just your horrific destiny, but that pivotal moment that sends you there, a moment that lingers forever.

You must know, first, that every moment is merely one of a constellation spread across the sky of my life. These moments, here with you, are the only ones that matter, the only ones I never want to leave.

The process with the folks at James Gunn’s Ad Astra was both intense and rewarding. Rather than a simple acceptance (or rejection), they sent back a thorough list of questions and recommended changes. It took me some time to work through these points, and to be honest, it was a struggle, but in the end it only made the story better.

After it was accepted for publication, they provided me with the artwork that would be associated with the story (see above). I was blown away. I have zero visual artistic talent, and this image was more than I could possible have imagined.