I have many colleagues from various software jobs to thank for themes that wormed their way into this book. First, my colleagues at Cortico for all things digital archival and what it means to build story-sharing software in partnership with communities. To my colleagues at Ethyca for teaching me more than I ever wanted to learn about data privacy. Building open-source software with you all also taught me the value of a good commit message, a good git rebase, and a good emoji :chefskiss:.

This book started as a short story, and I only had the confidence to make it into something longer thanks to the encouragement of Amy Johnson, the Dream Foundry writing contest, and my wonderful cohort at Aspen Summer Words, led by the incomparable Fonda Lee.

Super special thanks go to the earliest readers of this book, back when it was rambling and rough: Constance Fay and Mike Meneses, the best writing group anyone could ask for! Thanks for all the love and silliness. In addition, Zhengyang Wang made sure I didn’t make terrible gaffes in Chinese and pushed me to be more detailed on the historical portions. He also helped me chase down what exactly happened to those bronze lions. Sam Cordero, in addition to providing always valuable feedback, made sure Louise didn’t give our heroes food poisoning by taking a five-hour bus ride without putting her food in a cooler. Sam also gets a special shout-out for making incredible egg-tart ice cream sandwiches in Monica’s honor. Monica would have loved them.

I can’t thank the team behind Reese’s Book Club’s LitUp fellowship enough—Dhonielle Clayton, Zoraida Córdova, Tessa Gratton, Natalie C. Parker, Melissa Seymour, and of course LitUp’s fearless leader, Gretchen Schreiber. Thanks also to everyone else at both We Need Diverse Books and Madcap Retreats who made the fellowship possible! To my mentor Adrienne Young, for walks through Nashville and also for startling insights that paved the way for Mr. Gao to fully realize his sinister potential. Most of all, thanks to my fellow fellows Tolani Akinola, Margot Fisher, Ashley Jordan, and Bora Reed. Nobody could ask for a better group of people to go through publishing with!

To Eddy Yang and Iris Chan, who lent their medical insight into hip surgeries and hospital cafeteria food.

To my friends in the Boston area for making every day so fun and reminding me there’s more to life than writing and coding—Claire, Elisabeth, Gaurav, Karl, Rathanak, Wendy, Yin. This book had some good jokes, right? Right . . . ?