This concludes chapter 5 of Tales from the Interface.
This story holds a lot of meaning for me, but before you read my comments, I would be so interested have your thoughts. I believe that stories are living things. Readers bring almost as much into them as the author tries to put in. I will share some of my notes after the break.
Here are some of the meaning the story has for me.
The parent-child relationship is a very important part of the story. We see a father, risking his life everyday in a world that his daughter cannot see, access or comprehend. What she can see is the effects it has on her father. On the other side, the giant centipede is also a parent and it must defend the crystals upon which his offsprings depend for survival.
I also wanted to explore the idea that war is not necessarily black and white and that both camps can be right, from their own point of view. Both see each other as monsters and in this story are not naturally equipped to understand each other.
The coloured sky is also a strong symbol for me and tied directly to the father’s music. Disease takes the sky and the music away from them, but if you noticed at one point the daughter tries to give music back to the father. The end shows the unexpected nature of life. They vanquish the centipedes and in doing so, inadvertently allow the sky to be seen once again by the children. The cost of this event is not obvious at a glance and I will let you ponder these questions:
- Are the centipedes really vanquished?
- Will they ever realize or regret that their victory was at the cost of the life of the centipedes?
- You might have noticed that each time the workers enter the mine, a display shows how many tunnels have been built. In fact it is likely the cause of the collapse at the end of the story. Have they mined everything out? Are there still crystals, or have they mined everything? Then what? Has the disease ultimate conclusion simply been delayed? If so, was it worth annihilating the centipedes to delay something that cannot be avoided?
I have not tried answering these questions myself, but I personally love open ended stories and I think it’s interesting to ponder these questions.
I certainly hope you have enjoyed this. Again I tried doing something vastly different from what I’ve done till now. Big thanks to Rudy Caya for letting me use him as a model for the character of the father. Not sure how well I captured his likeness, but it was a good learning experience.
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I still have a lot of work to do to finish the next chapter. It looks great and inking is progressing well. Hopefully, I can start publishing it before fall. I thank you in advance for your patient and support. You can follow the progress on Instagram
See you around the Interface
– Manu
