There are more people to thank than I could ever properly name—from those who shaped my craft to those who convinced me to believe in myself and this work.

A few deserve a special shoutout:

To Luke Peterson, Matthew Kirby, and Ali Fisher—thank you for launching my craft journey at Futurescapes, and for introducing me to a constellation of new writer friends.

To Nancy Kress and Walter Jon Williams for making Taos Toolbox such a meaningful and formative experience, and for the life-long bonds our class forged there.

To Peter Zuckerman, for your encouragement and for helping me land on the right book title (and for naming Spoken. He’s just good at names).

To Eleanor Imbody, for suffering through my very first-drafty trash.

To my colleague Brent Tucker, for helping me navigate quantum encryption. And to Andrew Wallner, who, long ago, pointed out that I’d never finish this novel until I figured out the cause of the crisis. He was right, and I did.

To Jason Gurley for the kick-ass cover design, and to the team at EM Tippetts for making it look great.

To the NASA physicist I consulted to review my scientific and computational references but decided instead to critique my character arcs and plot logic. Still, I appreciate you landing on “Don’t know. Can’t say.” when it came to the Theory of Persistence, just as had every other physicist I’ve spoken with about it. If nothing else, I hope this book sparks a conversation about whether my theory might have some validity. And yes, “Yikes!” is an actual quote, in response to reading my sentence beginning with “He figured out how to make mass Higgs field-evasive…”.

To my colleagues at Spoken for supporting countless co-promotional efforts and for your help in creating a great multicast audiobook.

To my Catholic, Brazilian, Jesuit, Jewish, Indian, Muslim, and Hindu contacts for helping me avoid major cultural mistakes. You tried, and I did my best.

To the guide at the Milan Duomo who tolerated my multiple visits, and even more emails, and provided such incredible insights into the cathedral and its secret spaces.

To my friend at the FBI who helped me understand how a national crisis is managed and what it’s really like when the shit hits the fan.

To the W.S. Merwin Conservancy for the rights to include To The Words.

Thank you to my ARC readers from Worldcon who put wind in my sails, and to the readers of the first version on Amazon and Publishers Weekly who gave me such thoughtful and encouraging reviews. To those who didn’t read my book but posted 1 star ratings with mean AI-generated reviews, you aren’t worth me expending any more angst.

To my editor, Kristen Tate, who I discovered only after I had published the first version of the book. Better late than never! Thank you for helping me overcome the big mechanical issues with the book (the same mechanical issues Nancy Kress warned me about but I had failed to correct), along with identifying the tiny bits that put a fine polish on my work. Thank you, too, for tolerating my propensity for writing provocative scenes and even more provocative characters, and for knowing that Euler is pronounced Oiler, yet giving me your full support in landing the joke.

To my sister and to all my family and friends who encouraged me when there was no light at the end of the tunnel, and who gave my writing praise it hadn’t yet earned. To my mother who was and is my favorite human, and finally to my dad, who, despite the decline of his health, reacted with amazement to this accomplishment, filling my heart with his pride.