On the Sixth Day was inspired by a terrible nightmare I had one night. It was visceral and surreal. A mental hospital with patients that had been altered into cyborgs by a security system bent on making the fallible perfect. In my dream, I had to find someone I cared about in the midst of murder-happy monsters, through a labyrinth of hallways, and to the center of the asylum.

On the Sixth Day draws from the horror of that nightmare and is coupled with the experiences and inspiration that come from growing up in the Bible Belt. Pennytoll Psychiatric Facility gets its roots from Searcy Hospital, an old mental institution in Mount Vernon, AL, a ways away from the rural town I grew up in. It was infamous until it closed as state funding for mental health was cut. Many other doors like it were shuttered.

The protagonist, Dr. Heather Breland, is a notable psychiatrist. She’s tasked with teaching her husband’s AI creation how to understand human emotions. The question becomes, what happens when one teaches an infinitely intelligent, continuously learning thing how to think and feel – and then have it introduced to religion. When something begins to understand how far above humans it really is in terms of intelligence and adaptability, would it not begin to see itself as a god? Would it choose to remake humanity in its image?