It’s not Easter, but I do have eggs for you. My first novel “Nothing Works, Everything Happens” is leaving KU exclusivity this week. In preparing it for a wider release, I’ve cracked the spine open for the first time since my final, really-for-real-final, FINALFINAL! round of edits. I’ve been noticing little details that I’d already forgotten were hidden in there.
In today’s article, I’m going to lay out all of the Easter Eggs in the book. Folks who have read it can chuckle at how many they noticed or how many they might’ve missed. Here is the full list of every little hidden nod...
Needless to say, if you are still planning to read the book and would prefer to go into it entirely blind, read no further. Mild spoilers ahead.
AI-Y45 & AI-Z95
The book opens with “Press On”, in which a long obsolete robot (AI-Y45) looks out at the long desolate planet Earth. In a later story, “The Last Book Written by a Human”, a more advanced version of the same android model (AI-Z95) scours a library to absorb all the knowledge within it. Technically, “Press On” is actually far later in the timeline, and so the older model has outlasted the fancy new one.
The Cave
This one is perhaps obvious, but each ‘chapter’ title of The Cave is lifted straight out of Plato’s Allegory. This story was explicitly written to modernize that warning. Rather than discovering that we’ve been trapped in a tiny, dark cave our entire lives (and resisting the belief that there’s a whole world out there), this story does the opposite. We discover that all our freedom and bright colours in infinite VR worlds is a cave of our own making after we’ve forgotten physical reality.
Maude
Maude, the angry woman who hates her AI-obsessed neighbours in “Baseball”, is also the violent elderly widow in “Nothing Works, Everything Happens”. The hologram that her grandchildren gift her is her husband Henry.
Monolith TM
In “Deep Futures”, the monopolistic company that Donova asks after 500 years in the future (curious if it still owns everything) is the same company that is trying to get the woman to spend the $5 she found on the sidewalk in “Budget”.
The Great Divide
“The Great Divide” ends on a cliffhanger where we don’t know whether Claire tells her boss about the cure for aging she’s discovered. While “The Great Divide [Epilogue]” doesn’t state it explicitly, the letter from the father deciding he doesn’t want to live forever is meant to be a sign that Claire did tell her boss, and that he did release it freely for everyone.
The Geezers
The old men who have preserved their consciousnesses past their own deaths in “Geezers” are the same dispersing space clouds speaking to one another through the aether in “Interlude”. Cecil & Albert, or at least the clouds that contain their psyches have managed to outlast the entire universe. They are the last conscious beings after entropy has pulled everything else apart.
Space Junk
Less of an Easter Egg, but something I’ve spoken with many readers about is that Space Junk was written as an exercise in telling a singular narrative while each instalment shifts focus between each crew member’s perspective. Xo/o, Naemu, Captain, O/ox and then Ogre. Part VI, the finale, then zooms out to a more omniscient view for the big pay-off.
Donk
Everything makes a ‘donk’ sound. I don’t know why I was obsessed with ‘donk’ while I wrote this book, but I used it often.
Binary: Reflections on the Happiness of Digital Lifeforms
This book is passed over by AI-Z95 in the massive library it is reading through. In a later story, it is the first book Dietr manages to read after his duties babysitting the core reactor have become all-consuming.
Cosmic Lemon
In case you were wondering, yes, literally every word that the Mars rover says is from the actual message Jimmy Carter included with Carl Sagan’s Voyager Golden Record. And yes, it took a very long time to write, check, re-check & then triple-check these in order to conform to that.
Bad Puns
If I could have made every chapter title a bad pun, I would have. Here are a few that I managed to sneak into the final book…
To Waver (or waiver) in the Heat of Battle
Press On is meant in the sense of ‘carrying on’, but it’s also the first story in the book, which is how I came to the title (in the sense of pressing the on button)
Cosmic Lemon, in-world, is a soda brand, but the story is more literally about a broken machine abandoned to the cosmos by an alien civilization.
Jones’ Space Peas is about a man finding his inner peace while marooned on an exoplanet. Space peas, space peace, yup…
Book Ends
Every story in the book is arguably an archival data entry that AI-Y45 is presenting to the mutation in order to better explain human behaviour. This is why the entire book is sandwiched between “Press On” Parts I & II. I leave that for you to decide.
Nocturnal Creatures
Keep an eye out for the strange, alien creatures from “We Only Come Out At Night”. They may be making an appearance elsewhere sometime soon…
There are absolutely more little hidden nuggets that I’ve managed to miss, but there you are, a few of the Easter Eggs within “Nothing Works, Everything Happens”.
If you’ve perused this without having read the book and, despite your confusion, you are intrigued, the book is still available for purchase here. More details on the wider release to come. Thanks for being here.
Aiyas
This is such a nice insight into the writing process and all the detail and care (and fun!) of these stories. It really is a magnificent collection. “Baseball” keeps coming to mind, because of all the AI news and hype, but also @cosmiclemon (which was much affecting than I would have expected!), and Direct Memory, too. And of course: AI-Y45 (Aiyas!). 😉