I do not write in a vacuum, and I should note the more important influences that played a role in my conception and execution of Black Helicopters: T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land; the works of Lewis Carroll and Charles Hoy Fort; more books on chess than would be practical to list here, but notably Martin Gardner’s examination of the “chess problem” in Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There; Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; David Bowie’s Outside and Blackstar; Anne “Poe” Decatur Danielewski’s Haunted; Funcom’s The Secret World; J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci’s Fringe; Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles; Current 93’s Black Ships Ate the Sky and Soft Black Stars; James Joyce’s Ulysses; Eleanor Coerr’s Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes; the music of Radiohead, Moby’s Everything Is Wrong, and the Veils’ Total Depravity; various works on chaos theory, astronomy, and quantum physics, including Kip S. Thorne’s Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy, John Briggs and F. David Peat’s Turbulent Mirror: An Illustrated Guide to Chaos Theory and the Science of Wholeness, and P. J. E. Peebles’ Principles of Physical Cosmology; Leigh Van Valen and other biologists’ writings on the Red Queen hypothesis; and Edward Gorey’s The Other Statue. Very special thanks to Dr. Denise L. Davis (Brown University) for the French translation in Chapter Nine (“Bury Magnets. Swallow the Rapture. [17 Vrishika, 2152]”); to the amazing “Mr. Rook” for the evening games and the afternoon critiques; to my comrade in virtual arms and conspiracy, Vic Ruiz; to my niece, Sonoye Murphy; and to Kathryn A. Pollnac, my original Miss Sixty-Six. The paleontological exploits, misadventures, and disappointments of the “twins” mentioned in the text are all my own, a sharp jab of autobiography. Thanks to William K. Schafer at Subterranean Press, without whom this novella would never have been written, much less published, and also a posthumous thank-you to Peggy Rae Sapienza (1944–2015), who saw that I made it to Arlington County in October 2014. A special thanks to my editor, Jonathan Strahan, and to Katharine Duckett, Irene Gallo, Theresa DeLucci, and everyone else at Tor.com for giving Black Helicopters a new lease on life.