This week Futures is pleased to welcome Cassandra Khaw and her story Hungry ghosts. You can keep up with Cassandra’s latest work on her website or by following her on Twitter. Here she reveals what inspired her latest tale — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Hungry ghosts

Every year, some 700 million people purportedly participate in the biggest human migration in the world. I can believe that. I’m one of them. I’ve spent the past six years ping-ponging across the globe, but every Chinese New Year, I go home. I can’t not be home.

Although Hungry ghosts contains only a passing reference to Chinese New Year, it does draw shamelessly from that same sense of familial duty. I’ve always wondered what’d happen if we make it to the stars, if we started darting between galaxies. Would we give up who we were? Would we trade the traditions of our past in favour of creating something new? 

To an extent, yes. Change is inevitable and exciting. But the Chinese people have celebrated their festivals for thousands of years. We’ve always fought to go home. We’ve always made it a point to travel hundreds of miles each year, all to find our way back to the hearth. And that got me thinking.

If something like that could prove true for the living, how would it affect the dead? 

If we could upload our consciousnesses to a neural network and continue long after our mortal forms have disintegrated, what would we do? Me, I’d make sure to attend the Hungry Ghost Festival annually. Just for kicks. Heck, I’d be present for everything. Because I can’t imagine not wanting to be home, not wanting to watch over every new generation, not wanting to be there for them. 

I’ve always tried to find my way home. Given an eternity to live, I don’t think I’d ever stop.