Patricia pulled out her own phone, because talking out loud to Laurence and having him text back seemed weird. She texted him: “me 2. need chocolate so bad.”

The road leveled out and came to a grassy area, and beyond that they could glimpse the brightness of cement and stucco basking at noon. They both paused, facing each other at the threshold, wondering if they were ready to face whatever the world would look like now.

Laurence hefted his phone and typed a word: “indestructible.” He didn’t hit send or anything, just kept the word floating at the top of the rectangle screen. She saw it and nodded and felt a surge of warmth somewhere. Under the flat of her sternum, somewhere around there. She reached out and touched that place on Laurence’s chest, with two fingers and a thumb. “Indestructible,” she said aloud, almost laughing. They leaned in and kissed, dry lips just brushing together, slow, speaking volumes.

Then Laurence took Patricia’s arm and they led each other out into the brand-new city.

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I really hope you guys enjoyed this book. If you didn’t, or if there was stuff that didn’t make sense to you or seemed too random, just e-mail me and I’ll come to your house and act the whole thing out for you. Maybe with origami finger puppets.

First and foremost, I have to thank my editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and everybody else at Tor, who were supremely patient and encouraging with this book as well as the short fiction that led up to it. Including Miriam Weinberg, Irene Gallo, Liz Gorinsky, Patty Garcia, and so many others. I’m also hugely grateful to my agent, Russ Galen, for spending hours on the phone with me hashing out the book’s structure.

A ton of people gave me incredibly helpful feedback, including but not limited to Karen Meisner, Joe Monti, Liz Henry, Lynn Rapoport, Claire Light, Naamen Tilahun, Jaime Cortez, Nivair Gabriel, Kaila Hale-Stern, Diantha Parker, Rana Mitter, Terry Johnson, Chris Pepper, Rebecca Hensler, Susie Kameny, David Molnar, the bison in Golden Gate Park, and so many others.

Also, futurist Richard Worzel helped me troubleshoot the book’s near-future war and disaster scenarios. Kevin Trenberth helped me to make my superstorm as plausible as possible. Lydia Chilton helped me create a realistic AI. Mike Swirsky was a huge help with the Siberian drilling project, and Dr. Dave Goldberg helped a lot with the weird physics. I also learned a lot from the Cornell Bird Lab. Lightninglouie gave the book its epigraph. And my father helped me a lot with the book’s philosophical conundrums, while my mother helped me think about how systems work.

I also have to thank everyone at Gawker Media, including Nick Denton and the whole io9 crew, for giving me a place to explore my love of science fiction.

And finally, none of this would have been possible without my partner and co-conspirator, Annalee.