I first had the idea of Alien Nation in the summer after high school. I was writing a short story titled The Artifice, inspired by 1984 and The Matrix, and as soon as I finished it, I thought about what I would write next. There was a feeling that had occupied my mind for some time, amplified by the uncertainty I felt after high school. I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life; everything seemed so distant and unreal.