Whispers from Real Life

The deeper I delved into the context of Trump’s gold-checking fantasy, the more the story morphed into fiction — but fiction rooted in unsettling questions. Chief among them: Why does God allow what happens in the political world to happen? Not just now, but since the beginning of time.

At the very moment this question haunted me, I stumbled upon an interview between Reto Bossart and physicist Sabine Hossenfelder. She proposed a startling idea: perhaps the universe learns from us. Was it mere coincidence I found this video? Or was it a whisper from the Universe?

That whisper altered everything. The target of my story shifted. Trump became Kim — a nod to the North Korean leader Trump seemed to strangely admire. And with that name came a literary experiment: In English, "Kim" is usually female. Could I write a story in which the gender of Kim remained ambiguous?

Wanja — the character Kim loves — added another layer. In Germany, Wanja is female. In Russia, male. The love story between Kim and Wanja became a prism of possibility: man and woman, man and man, woman and woman. Or something beyond all binaries.