This book exists because of immeasurable amounts of help and input from other people. Enormous gratitude goes as always to Hannah and Tricia, who improved the manuscript every time they touched it, and to my mother, who in addition to providing helpful notes also managed to weather a sex scene written by her eldest daughter with unflappable grace and a single off-color quip about cannibalism.
Thanks to Mykyta for very casually asking me one day, “Ananke is a quantum computer, right?” and sending me into a frenzy of research for the rest of the week, because of course she is. On the same subject I would like to thank my sister Molly, a computer scientist as unlike Althea Bastet as possible (though she has on occasion lent mannerisms and backstory to Mattie Gale), for talking to me about operating systems. I cornered her at a party sometime near midnight and peppered her with questions; her bright-eyed eloquence on the subject even under the circumstances meant that her words ended up in the novel the very next day from the mouth of Professor Verge.
The rest of the information about quantum computers, as well as everything I’d forgotten and still don’t understand about quantum mechanics, mostly came from the Internet, for lo, I am no true scholar. I regret to say that I was unable to find similar information on the Internet regarding whether or not it is actually possible to get out of cuffs by dislocating your thumb—or indeed how to reliably dislocate said member—but my great thanks to all the thinly veiled fetish how-to’s for explaining to me the many other ways to escape a pair of handcuffs without the key. I have little doubt this knowledge will serve me well.
I’m also grateful to the friends and family who have been supportive of me and my peculiarities even if they haven’t been directly involved in whipping this manuscript into shape: my sister Maeve, my father, and my friends Cornelia, Shanelle, and Annelise, among others. Annelise in particular has been aggressively pitching my books to her every Tinder date and as such is directly responsible for a not insignificant portion of my sales in the New York metropolitan area.
But most of all, I am overwhelmingly grateful to two people who cajoled, persuaded, and nagged me into making the terrifying choices that made this book what it is. The first is Sarah, who read the first draft of Lightless and said, “You realize you’ve written a love story, right?” (I believe that on a quiet night, you can still hear her cry of “I told you so” echoing through the cosmos.) The second is Ryan, whose emotional well-being is of utmost importance to me and to whom I have only one thing to say: I added a second kiss. For the love of all that is holy, are you happy now?