The Buried Age Annotations

This document explains the continuity references, allusions, in-jokes, and scientific concepts contained in The Buried Age (TBA).   I assume that the reader is familiar with the basic characters and background of the Trek universe.

Be aware that this document contains spoilers for the whole of The Buried Age and for numerous episodes, films, and novels from all Trek series, particularly The Next Generation.  I would also strongly recommend not reading it until one has completed the novel, since many of the notes contain spoilers for things not revealed until later chapters.

Estimates for the dates covered by each chapter are listed after each chapter title.

Episode and book titles are TNG unless otherwise indicated.  Episode and short-story titles are in quotes, while film and book titles are italicized.

Abbreviations:

ENT — Enterprise	TOS — The Original Series	TAS — The Animated Series
TNG — Next Generation	DS9 — Deep Space Nine	VGR — Voyager
SGZ — Stargazer	TLE — The Lost Era	SNW — Strange New Worlds

Chapter Annotations

Pg.
Dedication
	For Emmett:  Emmett L. Bennett, Jr. was my uncle, a classical scholar and leading authority on the study of ancient Minoan and Mycenean clay tablets.  As the graduate assistant of Carl Blegen at the University of Cincinnati, he played a key role in the decipherment of the Linear B syllabic script in which most of those clay tablets were written, using the same skills he had employed as a cryptographer in World War II. He passed away a few years after I wrote this book, but he was quite touched by the dedication.
Part I: The Quality of Mercy
	Title is from The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Sc. i, from Portia’s speech in defense of Shylock.  Shylock is one of the many trademark roles of Patrick Stewart’s career as a Shakespearean actor.
Chapter 1 (May 21 – June 11, 2355)
3	Stardate 32217: The stardate given for the Maxia Zeta incident in “The Battle” was 40217.3, which would have been in 2363.  The date has been adjusted accordingly.  In most of this novel, I have followed the convention that a stardate “year” (from XX000.0 to XX999.9) corresponds to an Earth year from January 1 to December 31.  This chapter is an exception; stardate 32217 would be March 21 by that scheme, but I wanted Picard’s 50th birthday (established in his personnel file in “Conundrum” as July 13) to be coming up soon.
	“The Battle” established that Bok’s son (not named there) was on his first mission as DaiMon when he clashed with Picard.
	The 75th Rule of Acquisition is “Home is where the heart is, but the stars are made of latinum.”  (DS9: “Civil Defense”)
4	We know a DaiMon is a Ferengi captain, so I coined “GuiMon” to be the equivalent of an admiral (with a nod to Guilmon from Digimon Tamers, a favorite anime series of mine).  I assume it’s pronounced “Guy-mon.”
	The Great River or Great Material Continuum was established as a Ferengi belief in DS9: “Treachery, Faith, and the Great River.”  The 43rd Rule is my own coinage.
5	The 25th Rule:  “You pay for it, it’s your idea.” (Worlds of Deep Space Nine: Ferenginar: Satisfaction is Not Guaranteed)
6	Here I’ve attempted to explain why Starfleet knew nothing but rumors about the Ferengi in early TNG, given what was later established about how much commerce Ferenginar had with neighboring powers such as Cardassia even before this point.
8	The Stargazer crewmembers in this chapter (except where otherwise indicated) were created by Michael Jan Friedman in his novel Reunion.
	My description of Picard’s hair at this point is based on his appearance in flashbacks to 2354 in “Violations.”
	Miranda Vigo was established in “Bloodlines,” but no relationship to the weapons officer Vigo was mentioned.  Since Mike Friedman made Vigo a Pandrilite, the name had to be a coincidence.
9	“the sixth-brightest star in the Berengarian constellation of Maxia”: In Bayer designation, the stars of a constellation are assigned Greek letters in descending order of brightness.  Properly the name would be Zeta Maxia, but we’ve seen inverted Bayer designations elsewhere in ST, for instance Ceti Alpha and Kavis Alpha (in another non-Terran constellation).  Berengaria VII (first mentioned in TOS: “This Side of Paradise”) is a Federation colony world (it was slated for survey in ENT: “Bound” and mentioned as a Federation world in DS9: “In the Cards”).
	The existence of a Maxia constellation also explains why, in “The Battle,” Picard didn’t recognize what DaiMon Bok meant by “The Battle of Maxia.” Since there would be numerous stars in Maxia, the reference is not specific enough.
10	I named Lt. Schuster in honor of Michael Schuster, who maintained a Stargazer website (now defunct, but viewable at the Internet Archive) and gave me lots of helpful advice for this chapter.
11	“Can you identify them, Vigo?…”:  This line is from “The Battle,” spoken by Picard in a briefing when his memories began to intrude on the present.
	The events in paragraphs 4-6 are based on descriptions from Mike Friedman’s story “Darkness” in Tales from the Captain’s Table.
12	By the end of this page, the crew has taken the positions we see in Picard’s flashbacks in “The Battle.”  In this image, I’m assuming the man on the left is Durand, the woman is Asmund, and the man standing behind her is Schuster. (Luckily “Darkness” had Vigo killed in the second strike, helping me explain why a human was at Tactical.)  The man in this second image therefore had to be Ben Zoma, though it took some thinking to explain why he was standing there and giving a weapons report.
13	From the start of this page through “We can’t take another hit, Captain!” on p. 14 is from Picard’s final flashback in “The Battle.”  The dialogue is slightly different, though; in the episode he expressed frustration at his imaginary crew’s delay in executing his orders, but I assumed the real crew was more prompt.  I also needed to explain why the woman at helm was reporting on shield status.
14-16	From “Damage report!” on p. 14 to “Fire!” in para 4 of p. 16 is from the flashback in Picard’s quarters earlier in “The Battle.”  Again there is a discrepancy in crew responsibilities, in this case, the man at Tactical (Schuster) reporting on engine status.  Initially I was prepared to dismiss the discrepancies as distortions of Picard’s memory, but I was ultimately able to explain everything except the inappropriate uniform colors.  I did make one change in dialogue, however; the navigator actually gave the bearing as “seven mark nineteen,” which I changed to match Picard’s course setting.
	The idea behind “the Picard Maneuver” is sound if the enemy has lightspeed-limited sensors, but is hard to justify given the ubiquity of FTL sensors in ST. Hopefully my explanation here makes some sense.  The idea behind the Constellation class’s ability to switch between pairs of nacelles comes from the fan technical community.
	The staticky view of the ship on p. 15 reconciles Picard seeing the ship onscreen in “Darkness” with his failure to recognize Ferengi designs in “The Last Outpost.”  This is also why I made the ship a “Raider class” vessel (see p. 3) instead of the familiar Marauder.
16	Lisuni, an Ochati science officer, was a Stargazer crewmember from the novel Vulcan’s Heart by Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz, set in 2344.
16-18	The abandoning of the ship was described in Reunion and “Darkness,” but I’ve elaborated on it here.  I’ve also chosen to disregard two details from “Darkness.”  That story said the ship was abandoned due to an imminent warp-core breach, but it proved too complicated to explain why there would be an expected core breach that never happened, and why they wouldn’t have known it didn’t blow up.  “Darkness” also said they’d taken bodies with them, but I couldn’t see them carrying corpses in crowded shuttles and lifepods for ten weeks.
18	The description of rotating stators in Starfleet gravity generators is an apparent contradiction (since stators are stationary components), but it comes from p. 144 of the TNG Technical Manual by Rick Sternbach & Michael Okuda, two guys who generally know what they’re talking about.  I was willing to trust that they had a reason for the terminology.
20	Picard’s last log entry was seen recorded in the Stargazer‘s computers in “The Battle.”
21	Skimming off a planetary atmosphere has been known to happen with meteoroids hitting Earth’s atmosphere at shallow angles.  Also, the shape of the Stargazer‘s saucer section is not unlike a skipping stone, and the concavity in its underside could possibly create a vortex that could push the ship upward.  I tested the idea using a Galoob MicroMachine miniature of the Stargazer and a sink full of water, and I did get a few minor skims when the angle was right.  My MicroMachines were also useful in plotting out the battle.  Isn’t it great to be able to play with toys and call it work?
Chapter 2 (May 22 – August 18, 2355)
25	Stroman was mentioned in Reunion.  Yojaleya was mentioned in “Darkness.”
27	Batanides and Zweller are from “Tapestry.” Varley is from “Contagion,” Keel from “Conspiracy,” Vaughn from the DS9 novels, DeSoto from various TNG episodes, and Gold from SCE/Corps of Engineers.  Picard’s sister-in-law Marie and estranged brother Robert are from “Family.”
	Phillipa Louvois, her relationship with Picard, and the events of the court-martial were established in “The Measure of a Man.”
28	Picard showing Jack’s body to Beverly is from “Violations.”  The story of Jack’s death was told in Reunion.
	“Measure of a Man” claimed that a full court-martial is routine when a ship is lost, but in reality, what’s routine is a court of inquiry, which is an investigative hearing.  A court-martial is called only if an indictment is made.  I tried to rationalize it by taking “lost” more literally, suggesting negligence.
30	The form of the charges and procedures are based on various precedents from military law, including the US Manual for Courts-Martial.
	Excessive force in a combat situation is not a specific charge I could find in the US Manual, but I felt that Starfleet would have such a charge, especially given Directive 010 (see p. 38).
	US regulations forbid the accusing party from sitting on the court-martial panel.  This was not the case as of TOS: “Court-martial,” since Commodore Stone both filed the charges and chaired the panel.  But I think it’s a sensible rule, so I assumed it was instituted later.
31	Jerusalmi’s explanation about conflict of interest in military vs. civilian courts is based on information from my colleague Dayton Ward, a military veteran.  Other ST precedents include Areel Shaw prosecuting Kirk in “Court-martial” and Riker prosecuting Data in “The Measure of a Man.”
32	“Faster than light, no left or right”: A “rule” established in VGR: “Fury.”  At first blush it implies that turning at warp is always forbidden, but that contradicts many episodes of ST, and the dialogue from “Fury” leaves some room for interpretation.
34	Early TNG showed a Starfleet dedicated to peaceful exploration, but “The Wounded” later revealed that Starfleet had been at war with Cardassia until the third season.  Here I try to address that discrepancy.
35	“These are not the dark ages when prosecutors routinely framed innocent defendants simply to bolster their own win-loss records!”: Unfortunately, we do live in those “dark ages” right now.  Prosecutorial abuse in the United States is epidemic.
Chapter 3 (August 21-23, 2355)
36	T’Lara also appears briefly as an Enterprise helmswoman in TOS: Mere Anarchy Book 4: The Darkness Drops Again.
	My portrayal of the court-martial was based on this deleted passage from the script for “The Measure of a Man”:
	PICARD The Stargazer court-martial. It should have been a routine hearing. Yes, I had lost my ship, but my actions were entirely justified. Phillipa was assistant to the prosecution. She dug up every obscure case and citation and the panel hammered at me for three days. It damn near ended my career. It did end us.
38	Directive 010 was established in VGR: “In the Flesh.”
44	The Atrean species was seen in “Inheritance.”  The A7 computer expert rating is equal to Spock’s as of TOS.
45	The term “Picard Maneuver” for the warp jump was established in “The Battle.”  Behind the scenes and in fandom, it came to be applied to Patrick Stewart’s habit of pulling down the hem of his uniform tunic (though this was hardly unique to Stewart — see Spock’s death scene in TWOK).
46	Juanita Valderrama was the Stargazer‘s science officer as of 2333, seen in the SGZ novels Gauntlet and Progenitor by Mike Friedman.
48	“Ice giant” is currently the preferred term for planets such as Uranus and Neptune, which contain high proportions of ices and ice-forming substances like water, methane and ammonia, as opposed to Jupiter-type gas giants which are mostly hydrogen and helium.
49	Polyphemians are named for Polyphemus the Cyclops, son of Poseidon (Neptune).
	The date of the Crushers’ wedding was established in “Family.”  The extensive time spent together by Picard and the Crushers was established in “Attached” and elsewhere.
	The Acamarian Gatherers are from “The Vengeance Factor.”
	Red dwarf stars are typically prone to intense x-ray flares, especially early in their lifespans.
55	To beg the question is to phrase a question in a way that presupposes one’s desired answer, e.g. “Do you still beat your wife?”  The phrase is often misused to mean “to create/raise the question,” perhaps by confusion with “to beget the question.”
56-57	The Menthar-Promellian war was established as an archaeological interest of Picard’s in “Booby Trap.”  The Gorn contact, of course, was seen in TOS: “Arena.”
Chapter 4 (August 24-25, 2355)
60	“I daresay you even took pleasure from it”: Normally, a prosecutor would know better than to commit flagrant misconduct during a trial. According to Tim Fischer, a lawyer friend of my father’s whose name I misspelled as “Jim Fisher” in the acknowledgments (sorry), misconduct findings are usually arrived at on appeal and tend to be based on dry things like failure to disclose defense evidence or improper instructions in closing.  To justify Phillipa going over the line in cross-examination, I figured she must have gotten unduly excited by arguing with her lover. Admittedly that’s unflattering to her, but less so than portraying her as incompetent.
	“The Measure of a Man” established that Phillipa had left Starfleet after the court-martial, and that she felt she had been forced out while Picard believed “that was your own damn stubborn pride.”  The fact that she eventually returned suggests that her misconduct could not have been too serious, supporting Picard’s interpretation.
63	The “seek out new life/boldly go” passage was established as coming from a Zefram Cochrane speech in ENT: “Broken Bow.”
64-65	The post-Stargazer career paths of Ben Zoma and the others were established in Reunion.
65	Professor Galen (Norman Lloyd) was established as Picard’s mentor in “The Chase.”
66	“I am the captain of my soul” is the closing line of the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley.  At this point, Picard does not share the confident, defiant attitude of the poem.
	Note: The short story “Darkness” in Tales from the Captain’s Table occurs approximately two months after this chapter.  According to it, after the court-martial, Picard goes into a downward spiral of drinking and depression until Ben Zoma pulls him out of it.  He remains uncertain of his fitness for command, and the events of “Darkness” begin to renew his confidence — although for my purposes it had to be a limited recovery.
Part II:  Rounded With a Sleep
	From The Tempest, Act IV, Scene i.  Prospero says “We are such stuff  / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.”  Prospero is another role Patrick Stewart is noted for playing.
Chapter 5 (October 24, 2358)
70	A typical doctoral program in archaeology can take seven to ten years.
71	Iconia is from “Contagion” and DS9: “To the Death.”  The Sargonians are my term for Sargon’s people in TOS: “Return to Tomorrow.”  Organia is from TOS: “Errand of Mercy.”  Kurl is from “The Chase.”  Talos IV is from TOS: “The Cage.”  Clan Ru is from TOS: First Frontier by Diane Carey & Dr. James I. Kirkland.  Others are my own coinages.
	According to Memory Alpha, the University of Alpha Centauri and its role in Tagus III research were established in “Qpid.”  I’m not sure where in the episode this was mentioned, though.  It may be from background dialogue or graphics.
71-2	…even an expert couldn’t keep track of every civilization:  To explain why Picard was unfamiliar with the Tkon Empire in “The Last Outpost.”
72	Aldea and its legendary status were established in “When the Bough Breaks.”
	Kalandans are from TOS: “That Which Survives.”  Fabrini are from TOS: “For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” and are featured in my novel Ex Machina.  Cheron is from TOS: “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.”  The Shedai are from the Vanguard novel series.
74	The description of species billions of years ago expanding across the galaxy and finding themselves alone is consistent with what was revealed about the First Humanoids in “The Chase,” although at this point, Picard does not yet know of them.
75	The Peliar Zel natives were a frequently-seen background species in 24th-century ST, though only named in “The Host.”
	Thasians are from TOS: “Charlie X.”
76	In ST canon, there are no known ancient civilizations between 300 million years ago (TAS: “Beyond the Farthest Star”) and 87 million years ago (“Masks”).
	The Permian-Triassic extinction event really happened.  Of course, the idea that simultaneous extinction events happened on other worlds is purely conjectural.
78	her statements about her past … could not always be taken at face value: In “The Child”, Guinan told Wesley that she’d never met Picard before boarding the Enterprise, but later episodes established a long, close mutual friendship between them.  Therefore she must have been pulling Wesley’s leg. The fact that he’d just told her “People say you’re very old” may have had something to do with it…
	Picard and Guinan’s first meeting is depicted in SGZ: Oblivion by Mike Friedman.
79	As mentioned before, Carl Blegen was a famous archaeologist who worked at the University of Cincinnati, and my uncle Emmett was his grad student. Some of my manuscript revisions for The Buried Age were done in the Blegen Library at UC.
	New Samarkand: Samarkand has historically been one of the greatest cities in Central Asia and one of the oldest in the world.  It was the capital of the empire of Timur (Tamerlane), a descendant of the Mongol and Turkish horse nomads of Central Asia.  Such horse nomads were the probable inspiration of the centaurs of Greek myth, for which Alpha Centauri is named.
	Dr. Miliani Langford: In “Rascals,” Picard mentions that a female Dr. Langford has invited him on an archaeological dig.
80	“Darkness” took place while Picard was en route to meet his former second officer Elizabeth Wu, now a civilian researcher.
82	The ruins of Ligillium and the Zaterl Emerald are mentioned in “Devil’s Due.”
84	“Centauri VII” was actually the second planet of Centauri B, added to the five around the A star: Centauri VII was established as an inhabited world in TOS: “Requiem for Methuselah.”  But according to recent simulations performed by Elisa Quintana et al., the gravity of Alpha Centauri B would have prevented more than 3-5 planets from forming around Centauri A (with A’s gravity allowing only 2-4 around B).  Quintana’s simulations generally place either the second or third planet (or both) in Centauri A’s habitable zone, which is why I went with Centauri III instead of the Centauri IV seen in TOS: Crisis on Centaurus.
85	Centauri was two billion years older: It’s an occupational hazard for SF writers that the scientific process sometimes outraces the publication process.  In late April 2007, scientists using a technique bearing the really cool name of “gyrochronology,” which calculates stellar ages from their rotation rates and seems to be more precise than earlier methods, released a paper stating that Alpha Centauri appears to be roughly 3.9 billion years old, about half a billion years younger than our Sun.  This isn’t confirmed yet, though, and different methods give widely divergent age values.  Read more about it here: http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1237 Update 4/25/12: Not to worry — the latest research constrains Alpha Centauri’s age to around six and a half billion years, give or take 300 million (Analysis of alpha Centauri AB including seismic constraints).  So the age figure I used in the novel was right after all.
Chapter 6 (mostly December 6-27, 2358)
88-90	Picard’s research lasts throughout November 2358.
89	OB associations are clusters of young stars containing a large percentage of superhot white O stars and blue B stars.  Antares, however, is a red supergiant with a B-type companion.
	The song “Beyond Antares” was sung by Uhura in TOS: “The Conscience of the King.”
90	The stars themselves would have completed more than one full orbit around the galactic core in that time: The Sol System takes about 200 million years to complete a galactic orbit.  Other stars at similar distances from the core would presumably have similar orbital periods.
97	The Galen border conflicts with the Talarians were established in “Suddenly Human.”  The building tensions with Cardassia at this time were established in Chapters 18 and 20 of VGR: Mosaic by Jeri Taylor.
	My use of “Scorpius Reach” for the region stretching out in the direction of Scorpius (and my use later in this book and in Orion’s Hounds of “Cygnus Reach” for the region containing Deneb) follows the use of “Taurus Reach” in the Vanguard series of books.  It is not a real astronomical usage, but it sounds cool.
	Stefcia Janasz was named in honor of Anna Dorothea Janasz, mother of Michael Ventris.  Ventris collaborated/competed with my uncle Emmett on the decipherment of Linear B and ended up being the one who successfully solved the problem.  I’m indebted to the book The Man Who Deciphered Linear B by Andrew Robinson (not the DS9 actor/director) for details on Ventris’s work.
98	Cleopatra’s Needle: Name given to various famous Egyptian obelisks, one in London, one in New York City, one in Paris.  Since the Stargate film and TV series featured an Egyptologist named Dr. Catherine Langford, I considered inserting a reference to an Egyptologist ancestor of Miliani’s, but decided that would be cumbersome and settled for this oblique reference. (For conjectural fan designs for the ship, see the “Designing Cleopatra’s Needle” post on my blog.)
	Note: The expedition is launched on January 10, 2359.
Chapter 7 (mostly April 20 – May 21, 2359)
101-3	Covers January to April 2359.
101	Scalos water is from TOS: “Wink of an Eye,” and has the ability to accelerate people to superspeed.
102	Argelians are a hedonistic culture from TOS: “Wolf in the Fold.”
	Allis the Kobheerian linguist is an homage to Alice Kober, who also collaborated/competed with Michael Ventris and Uncle Emmett on deciphering Linear B.
103-4	My description of the innermost planet is perhaps slightly sensational, but based on current research.  Many such “hot Jupiters” have been detected in exoplanet searches, since such large planets so close to their stars are the easiest kind to detect by their effect on their stars’ motion.
	The Jovians here are respectively of Sudarsky classes IV, III, and II as described in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appearance_of_extrasolar_planets.
104	Caldonians are from “The Price.”
	Pacifica is an ocean planet mentioned in “Conspiracy” and seen in “Manhunt.”  In the Titan series it is the homeworld of the Selkie species; however, it does have some small land masses, and thus does not qualify as an ocean planet in the current scientific sense, i.e. a world with oceans dozens of kilometers deep and no land whatsoever.  It’s unlikely that a true ocean planet would be inhabited, since life in the oceans depends on nutrient runoff from the land.
106	The Mabrae are named for the faerie queen Mab, mentioned in Romeo and Juliet.  Their proper names are all derived from Shakespearean mystical creatures or forests (e.g. Tanebor from Titania & Oberon, Coray from Sycorax).
108	The Mabrae’s appearance is based on a fountain (right) not far from my neighborhood, depicting a nude woman adorned in strategically placed vines and flowers, with her lower limbs transforming into (or being transformed from) fluted stone columns.  My bus went by that fountain while I was trying to decide what the Mabrae would look like.
Chapter 8 (June 2 – September 4, 2359)
117	Potassium-40 and uranium-235 dating: Radiocarbon dating is more famous, but it only works on organic remains less than about 60,000 years old, about ten times the half-life of carbon-14.  Beyond that age, there is too little undecayed carbon-14 left to measure.  Radioisotope dating on older or inorganic samples can be conducted using other elements, if their half-life is long enough.  Potassium-40 has a half-life of 1.28 billion years, U-235 a half-life of 700 million years.
	hyponeutronium: A number of ST episodes have depicted structures made of “neutronium,” including the Doomsday Machine, the Dyson Sphere from “Relics,” and the door to Dominion Headquarters on Cardassia.  This is impossible, since true neutronium would be too dense and have too strong a gravitational pull to function as a building material, and probably could not exist outside the pressure and gravity of a neutron star anyway.  Hence I’ve taken a cue from Diane Duane, who coined the term “hyponeutronium” for an ultradense substance in TOS: My Enemy, My Ally.
122	Tetryons were established as subspace particles in “Schisms.”
124	argument of perigalaction: Perigalaction would be the point in a star’s orbit that brings it closest to the center of the galaxy.  The argument of perigalaction would be the angle between that point and the point where it crosses the reference plane of the galaxy from south to north.
127	Mary Kingsley was a British explorer who was the subject of my senior thesis in history.
	Onna Karapleedeez was mentioned in passing in “Conspiracy” as a prominent starship captain who had recently died under suspicious circumstances. Picard’s sharp reaction at the mention of the name implies he knew Karapleedeez.
	Since Kathryn Janeway is aboard the Kingsley, I timed its departure to match the events of Chapter 20 of VGR: Mosaic.  The chapter begins in January of the year, and a section four months later has her considering “a command post on a deep space mission that would depart for the Beta Quadrant in three months” (p. 254).  The chapter is set in the year following her father’s death, which we know from VGR: “Coda” was no later than 2358.
Chapter 9 (September 20-27, 2359)
130	Proserpina is of course a mythological reference, but it’s also a veiled Shakespearean reference, since she’s mentioned in (appropriately) The Winter’s Tale.
132	Metamaterials are being researched for possible applications in “cloaking” objects against radar or rendering them transparent to cell-phone signals. They’re touted in the press as the beginnings of “cloaking device” technology, but are unlikely to provide true invisibility for the reasons Picard describes.
132-3	The description of the bubble trails is based on footage I’ve seen from lakes beneath the Antarctic ice.  They’re really beautiful, and I tried feebly to capture the wonder of them here.
133-5	The architecture of the base is inspired by Stephan Martiniere’s cover art, which I first saw two days after writing this scene, necessitating a rewrite.  My original descriptions were much more bland and the discovery sequence had much less suspense and atmosphere.
	Technology that can draw power from ambient heat and other energy is not so amazing after all.  Scientists have already developed prototypes for acoustic heat engines that can convert heat into electricity.  In the longer term, programmable matter may also have energy-absorbing properties.
137-8	Freezing something in time is fanciful, but the rest is (I hope) a reasonably sound extrapolation from quantum physics, mostly the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
138	A Bose-Einstein condensate is a state of ultracold matter where the particles overlap and behave coherently like a single quantum waveform.  It’s kind of the material equivalent of a laser beam, and has applications in quantum computing.
139	ACB: Annular confinement beam, the component of a transporter beam that contains the matter stream and expels air from the destination site.
142	I made Onna Karapleedeez a Kreetassan because of the similar-sounding names.  The Kreetassans’ prickly nature and taboo against eating in public were established in ENT.
143	The Hokule’a Class is a non-canonical starship class introduced by the Star Trek Encyclopedia.  Its appearance is unknown, though some fan designers have portrayed it as a variant Excelsior class with downturned nacelle pylons.
144	Ensigns Wright and Sabar are named for two TNG writers, Herb Wright and Robert Sabaroff.
Chapter 10 (September 27 – October 1, 2359)
145	The death of Janeway’s father was depicted in Mosaic Ch. 18 and described in VGR: “Coda.”
147	Picard saving the Stargazer when its captain was killed was established in “Tapestry.”
	A Grankite Order of Tactics award for the Picard Maneuver is seen in Picard’s family album in Generations.
149	Heisenberg compensator:  See note on p. 74 of Ex Machina Annotations.
150	Dan Legato is named for TNG’s visual effects producers Dan Curry and Robert Legato.
152	The Pre-Cataclysm aliens here are “cameos” by aliens I’ve created for my original SF.  The only one that’s seen print so far is the Chirrn (from “Aggravated Vehicular Genocide”), the kangaroo-bodied species with bulging eyes.
	“Bolus”: It stands to reason that Kreetassan profanities would pertain to eating and swallowing.
153	all great Neptune’s oceans will not wash it clean: Paraphrasing Macbeth’s lament about the blood on his hands.
154	Dr. Lenama is a Lorini, the name that the people of Yonada adopted upon settling on Daran IV according to Ex Machina.  His name is derived from the name “Leonard McCoy.”
	nucleosomes: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosome.
158	My description of Ariel’s brow coloration was inspired by the Kyoshi warriors of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Chapter 11 (October 3-4, 2359)
164	“I wouldn’t say that, exactly”: After writing this novel in which Kathryn Janeway meets a character described as “a living universal translator,” I learned that in VGR: “Hope and Fear,” set over 15 years later, Janeway says “I can’t say I’ve ever met a living universal translator.”  Thus it was necessary to figure out why Janeway would not define Ariel in those terms.
165	a clear, throaty alto: The voice I imagined for Ariel was Claudia Black’s.
173	Platonians are from TOS: “Plato’s Stepchildren,” Omegans from TOS: “The Omega Glory.”
174	Mark Johnson is Janeway’s fiance, seen in VGR: “Caretaker” and Mosaic.  Justin Tighe was her first fiance in Mosaic, killed with her father in Ch. 18.
Chapter 12 (October 5 – November 5, 2359)
176	The pod ship from Questar M-17 is from TAS: “Beyond the Farthest Star.”  This discussion is an afterthought; I didn’t realize its similarities to the Proserpina base’s technology until well after I wrote this part of the book.
179	The Perseus Arm is the next galactic arm out from our own Orion Arm.  It is several thousand light-years from the explored space around the Federation, according to Star Trek Star Charts.
186	Picard’s equanimity at the prospect of cyborg enhancement is, of course, a bit of ironic foreshadowing.  It’s still several years before he meets the Borg.
	Note: The expedition reaches Alpha Centauri at roughly the end of 2359.
Part III: Brave New World
	From The Tempest, Act V, Sc. i.  Miranda says, “O brave new world, that has such people in it.”  Miranda Jones paraphrased this in TOS: “Is There in Truth No Beauty?”
Chapter 13 (January 3 – February 1, 2360)
194	Trelka is a system in Cardassian space, home to a Dominion base in DS9: “Once More Unto the Breach” (another Shakespeare connection).
196	Timur’s Peak: See note about New Samarkand, p. 79.
200	Dr. Denis is named in honor of Denise Okuda, the video playback supervisor and unofficial medical consultant for TNG and later ST series.
	“the kind of rapid evolution that can occur on transition to a new environment, where noticeable change can occur within a few hundred or thousand years”: Recent research has suggested that this is indeed the case, and that the change can even come faster depending on the species.  See, for example: http://discovermagazine.com/2015/march/19-life-in-the-fast-lane
201	The mind-transfer technology of Camus II is from TOS: “Turnabout Intruder.”  The assertion that the same technology appeared on Eris Alpha and Kandoge is from ENT: What Price Honor by Dave Stern.
202	Some works of ST tie-in fiction have presented the Organians as an active presence in the decades following “Errand of Mercy,” or sought to explain their “disappearance” by the TOS movie era.  However, given that “Errand” portrayed them as isolationists who found interaction with humanoids distasteful, that seems to provide a ready explanation for their lack of intervention in conflicts not directly involving Organia.
204	The Tzenkethi are a species that fought a war with the Federation sometime before TNG/DS9. Benjamin Sisko was promoted to lieutenant commander during the war, according to DS9: “Homefront.”  Since Sisko is seen as a lieutenant in 2360 in TLE: Catalyst of Sorrows, this would presumably put the Tzenkethi War sometime between Parts III and IV of this novel.  (I avoided specifics, though, since there were plans at the time to do a TLE novel about the Tzenkethi conflict.)
	Riva was a legendary Federation ambassador seen in “Loud as a Whisper.”  Sarek’s ongoing prominence in Federation diplomacy was established in “Sarek” and “Unification.”  The lack of fighting during a nominal state of war is another attempt to reconcile the peacetime conditions of early TNG with “The Wounded”‘s assertion that the war did not end until 2366.  There are real precedents; North and South Korea are still officially at war as of this writing despite the lack of fighting for over half a century.
206	The term “Introdus” for the retreat of a civilization into virtual reality comes from the fiction of Greg Egan.
210	Picard’s love of Dixon Hill adventure stories was established in “The Big Goodbye,” whose author Tracy Tormé was credited as the author of the Dixon Hill tales on a graphic in the episode.
211	The Organians who explore by possessing others’ bodies were seen in ENT: “Observer Effect.”
212	The Breen are a mysterious and hostile race mentioned in “Hero Worship” and Generations and seen in DS9.  The Sheliak and the Treaty of Armens are from “The Ensigns of Command.”  Star Trek Star Charts placed Breen territory in the direction of Sheliak.
Chapter 14 (February 9-15, 2360)
213	The description of Starbase 20’s architecture is inspired by Starbase 11 from “The Menagerie.”  The deep greenish-blue of the sky suggests it orbits an M-type red dwarf, which would give off little blue light for the atmosphere to scatter.  The diminished scattering helps make the orbital drydock more visible from the ground.
220	The Darwin Research Station was seen conducting genetic engineering experiments on human children in “Unnatural Selection,” conflicting with what DS9 and ENT later established about the ban on human genetic engineering.  The term “Augment” was used in ENT to refer to the genetically enhanced humans from the Eugenics Wars.
221	“…the fourth time you’ve asked for our help”: The previous three would be consulting Varley for Starfleet navigation charts (p. 96-7), calling in the Kingsley at Proserpina, and asking Starfleet to investigate candidate Manraloth worlds (p. 205).
	The TNG Technical Manual postulated that the Galaxy Class was under construction as early as 2350, with the USS Galaxy being commissioned in 2357.  However, onscreen references in “Booby Trap” and “Eye of the Beholder” implied a much shorter construction time.  Because of this and for story reasons, I have assumed a later launch date for the Galaxy (see p. 309).
222	The Yamato was established in “Where Silence Has Lease” and seen under Donald Varley’s command in “Contagion.”  The TNGTM established it as the second Galaxy-class starship to be constructed.
223	“But flowers distill’d…”: The final couplet of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 5.
	In-story, the Portia is probably named after the leading lady of The Merchant of Venice; however, I actually named it after the Portia from Julius Caesar, who was unaware that her husband Brutus was planning an act of treason and murder.  Just a little thing we call “foreshadowing”…
	It seemed appropriate to make the Portia a Miranda-class ship, since Miranda is also a Shakespearean character.  The “science configuration” of the Portia is the same as that of the Saratoga in DS9: “Emissary” (see also: http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/schematics/miranda-modified2.jpg).  The “sturdy construction” of the Miranda class is my explanation for why they’re still in service after nearly a century.
224	The main crew of the Portia is named in honor of TNG directors, while the scientists are named for TNG composers.  The exception is Shawn Rider, who is intended to be the transporter chief Michael Rider played in several early TNG episodes.
225	Starbase G-6 was where Deanna Troi was dropped off for a brief visit home in “Hide and Q.”
	Grazerites were introduced in DS9: “Homefront”/”Paradise Lost.”
227	Data’s computational speed was established in “The Measure of a Man,” and is a fraction of today’s fastest supercomputer speeds.  He may have been designed to process data relatively slowly so as to be able to interact on a human level.
228	Data’s discovery on Omicron Theta was established in “Datalore.”  The stated stardate corresponds to February 2, 2338, his activation date according to his personnel file.  His composition was established in “The Most Toys.”
	Data’s difficulty perceiving the social and emotional subtext necessary to understand idiomatic speech is similar to that experienced by humans with Asperger’s Syndrome and other autistic disorders.  Data might have benefitted from reading An Asperger Dictionary of Everyday Expressions, a reference book that helps explain idioms and metaphors to people with Asperger’s and related conditions.
229	Data’s limited career and social advancement here is an attempt to explain why Data was so clueless about humanity at the start of TNG despite being 26 years old.
	In the flashback to 2364 in “All Good Things,” Data seems to react to Picard as though they have never met before, but nothing in the dialogue makes this explicit.  I felt it was more logical to assume that they had a prior acquaintance given their close mentor-pupil relationship in TNG, and given that Picard was more accepting and patient toward Data than many others in Starfleet were, as though he’d already been won over.
Chapter 15 (March 4-13, 2360)
233	Kitalpha is Alpha Equulei, a yellow G0 giant with an A-dwarf companion, 186 light-years from Earth.  Albireo is Beta Cygni, a red giant with a blue B-dwarf companion, 385 ly from Earth.
234	“…listening to McCarthy, Jones and Deb’ni chat away about their disparate musical tastes…”: In case anyone thought I forgot Jay Chattaway in my homage to TNG composers.
235	The use of android assassins in WWIII and the subsequent abandonment of the field is my own conjecture to explain the underdeveloped state of robotics in the Federation.
236	“On stardate 37175.5, at 0537 hours shipboard time, Data was alone in the quantum physics laboratory on deck 7, sector 03, compartment 02 of the U.S.S. Portia, conducting simulations on the use of the Jahn-Teller effect to modify the Cooper pairs in the Bose-Einstein condensate of a standard Starfleet transporter Heisenberg compensator unit in order to minimize disruptive interference between its quantum waveform and that of a Manraloth stasis field’s fringe zone of positional uncertainty.”: It took me over 20 minutes to write this one sentence.  It is the most heavily researched single sentence in the book, if not my entire body of work.
238	Casting Brent Spiner as Noonien Soong in “Brothers” was a neat gimmick, but it created a continuity nightmare.  How could Data’s origin have been unknown prior to “Datalore” when he looked exactly like the Federation’s leading expert on positronic robotics?  It proved too cumbersome to explain this discrepancy, so I settled for establishing that Data had not been motivated to piece together the rather obvious clues to his origin, without addressing whether anyone else had figured it out.
239	Apparently it was Ariel who gave Data the idea to create Lal in “The Offspring.”
245-6	The ST universe is full of fictitious nebulae that are nowhere to be found in the real night sky, and are far denser and generally more compact than real nebulae.  I used to consider this an unresolvable discrepancy, but then I thought of something.  We’ve just begun discovering a new class of interstellar objects, rogue planets or “planemos” that do not orbit stars and are believed to have formed independently of any star system.  There could be thousands of them out there that we simply haven’t discovered yet because our telescopes aren’t powerful enough to find something so small and dim. And it occurred to me: if star systems form out of big nebulae, then it stands to reason that there could be smaller nebulae giving birth to these planemos. Nebulae that would be hard to detect because they’re smaller and dimmer than most stars, although up close they might look impressively bright and colorful.  Indeed, we’re still discovering numerous dim red dwarf stars in our own stellar neighborhood, so it’s certain that there are still plenty of undiscovered objects out there. So the micronebulae I propose here are something that I think may well actually exist.  If so, I think I’m the first to propose it (although the term “micro-nebula” was used in passing in the VGR episode “Tsunkatse”).  It may turn out that Star Trek has once again anticipated a real milestone in science.
247	Kilif the Bolian is also named for a TNG director, namely Cliff Bole (after whom the Bolian species was named in the first place).
Chapter 16 (March 25-27, 2360)
249	Brown dwarfs basically come in two classes, L-type and the smaller T-type.  Read more about them at http://www.solstation.com/stars/pc10bd.htm.
250	Unlike the brown dwarf classes mentioned above, “L-class” is a fictitious ST designation for borderline-habitable worlds.
	Data’s immunity to hyperonic radiation, and Picard’s prior knowledge thereof, were established in “The Ensigns of Command.”  For more on hyperonic radiation, see p. 349 note in my Orion’s Hounds annotations.
252	whereas yellow stars grew hotter over their lifespans and red dwarfs stayed much the same indefinitely, brown dwarfs grew progressively cooler, their planets freezing over: It is possible that Psi 2000 from TOS: “The Naked Time” and Exo III from TOS: “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” were planets of brown dwarfs.
255	The radiation damage over hundreds of millions of years is a bit of a fudge on my part.  Adonis’s radiation belts would be like those of Jupiter, consisting of charged particles captured from the solar wind and accelerated to high velocities by Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field.  A brown dwarf would have a strong magnetic field too, but with little stellar wind, it’d have fewer particles.  I assumed that Adonis’s radiation belts were recharged by the collision with the micronebula, but that would’ve been relatively recent, so it’s hard to justify the radiation levels remaining that high on an ongoing basis.  Assume some unknown source kept the radiation belts charged.
256	projecting holographic images: Probably not the same technology as ST “holograms” (which aren’t actually holograms in any technical sense but rather volumetric images); they could employ the “particle synthesis” used in VGR: “Hope and Fear” or something far more advanced.  Or maybe they are at least partly the same technology.  Hey, we still use fire and string after half a million years or so.
257-8	I’m afraid the ratio of technobabble to real physics is higher in this section than in part 2.  It was harder to come up with a way to undo the stasis just a tiny bit than to figure out how to create it or demolish it.
259	It’s never been suggested in canonical ST that telepathy is a form of quantum entanglement, but it’s the working theory I use in my Trek fiction.  QE does theoretically allow the exchange of information in seemingly impossible ways.  I don’t believe it could really work like ST telepathy, but it’s a handy fudge.
263	“Like the holodecks Starfleet was beginning to install on newer starships”: Early TNG treated holodecks as a novelty, though later series treated them as a well-established technology (for instance, in VGR, Janeway said she had grown up with Flotter and Trevis holonovels).  I have assumed that they existed in civilian life for some time before the technology became efficient enough to include on starships.
265	Given that the quantum aura is virtually frozen in time and thus virtually incapable of gaining or losing energy (except immensely gradually), where is the energy for heating the rocks coming from?  I think it’s the rocks’ kinetic energy, imparted by the platycauds throwing them and gravity pulling them down, that’s getting converted into heat through friction.
Chapter 17 (April 2-6, 2360)
273	The Odyssey was a Galaxy-class starship seen in DS9: “The Jem’Hadar.”
279	The “modular delayed-action virus” is a concept seen in the anime series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
Chapter 18 (April 6, 2360)
293	The transition to incorporeality that Ariel describes is not unlike that undergone by “John Doe” in “Transfigurations,” although a better analogy would be Kes’s more violent transformation in VGR: “The Gift.”  The transformation of the Organians at the end of “Errand of Mercy” doesn’t really count, since their corporeal forms were illusory.
	I was careful to avoid the word “ascension” in the text, given that the Stargate franchise has made heavy use of the concept of “Ascended beings” in recent years.  There are various terms for the idea in SF, including “Transcendence” in David Brin’s Uplift universe and “Sublimation” in Iain M. Banks’ Culture universe.  I was happy to settle for “transition,” so as not to over-romanticize it.
295	“some of those damaged entities survive in a weakened form, incorporeal predators who take glee in the suffering they can inflict”: This may be the origin of beings such as Redjac from TOS: “Wolf in the Fold,” the evil pinwheel thingy from TOS: “Day of the Dove”, and the Sha-Ka-Ree “God” from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
296	The Shakespeare quotation is from Hamlet, Act II Sc. ii:
	What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable!  in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!  And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
	This quote will be returned to later in the book, and is a foreshadowing of Picard’s use of this same passage in “Hide and Q.”  My assumption is that when standing up for the human potential, he was recalling Ariel’s words on the subject.
297	“they would have died hereafter”: Paraphrasing Macbeth’s reaction to news of Lady Macbeth’s macdeath.  Err, death.
298	“My name is Giriaenn!”: Many years ago, I wrote an unsuccessful story involving aliens that lived hundreds of millions of years ago.  They were named the Manrathoth, and included a male named Ngarol and his matriarch Giriaen. I changed the first two names for aesthetics, and added a second n to “Giriaen” so that it would be easier to distinguish from “Guinan.”
	I tend to pronounce “Giriaenn” with a hard g sound, though your mileage may vary.
	“the Worldring Vairashu Five”: I assume a Worldring is the same thing as a Culture Orbital or a Halo from the computer game — a ring-shaped megastructure rotating for gravity, with inhabited space on the inside equal to the area of dozens or hundreds of Earth-sized planets.
	“Number One, tie in the main computer.”: Not sure if this came across, but my intent was that by calling Vejar and asking her to access the computer — an unnecessary step since he could’ve called the computer directly — Picard was alerting Vejar to monitor the communication clandestinely.
300	Picard is of course paraphrasing Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s famous statement, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
	Filmed and televised science fiction, including Star Trek, routinely portrays asteroid fields as densely cluttered obstacle courses.  Most of the time, this is sheer nonsense.  In Sol’s Main Asteroid Belt, the average separation between adjacent asteroids is roughly 16 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon.  We’ve detected planetesimal disks around other, younger stars that are on the order of a hundred times denser, but that still translates to a separation between asteroids on the order of a million kilometers, a few hundred thousand at least.  However, Adonis is on the scale of a Jovian system, with rings like Saturn’s, in which the typical separation between particles is on the order of a kilometer.  So the dense clutter described here is a realistic depiction, although it’s still not nearly as cluttered as your standard Empire Strikes Back type of fictional asteroid field.
Chapter 19 (April 12 & May 2, 2360)
308	The existence of Bolian co-husbands and co-wives was established in DS9: “Field of Fire.”
309	Data’s promotion to lieutenant commander in 2360 is extrapolated from “Datalore,” in which he said he spent four years at the Academy, three years as an ensign, and ten to twelve in the lieutenant grades.  Data’s personnel file (see p. 228 note) established his Academy tenure as 2341 – 45.
	Commander Orfil Quinteros (Gene Dynarski) was established as the supervisor of the Enterprise‘s construction in “11001001.”
	“ready to launch by the Bicentennial”: The Federation was founded in 2161.
	Although Quinn is confident that the Manraloth sabotage would be successfully purged, one can’t help noticing that the Yamato was destroyed in 2365 (“Contagion”), the Odyssey in 2370 (DS9: “The Jem’Hadar”), and the Enterprise in 2371 (Generations) — all within the timeframe of the catastrophic failures predicted by Data’s simulations.  I didn’t mean to imply a connection, and my intention is that the virus was indeed purged.  But who knows?  (Come to think of it, the ridiculously easy destruction of the Enterprise in GEN might make more sense that way….)
310	Data’s prior service on the Trieste was established in “Clues.”
311	The last sentence here is meant to evoke Hamlet’s vow at the end of Act IV, Sc. iv (also quoted on p. 365).
Part IV: Abysm of Time
	From The Tempest, Act I Sc. ii. Prospero asks, “What seest thou else / In the dark backward and abysm of time?” — by which he means Miranda’s memory.  This is a fitting reference to the black hole memory archive.  However, Part IV is primarily influenced by King Lear.  Patrick Stewart played a version of Lear in the movie The King of Texas.
Chapter 20 (June 4, 2363)
315	Starbase 324 was established as Admiral Hanson’s base of operations in “The Best of Both Worlds.”
	Betelgeusians are from Star Trek: The Motion Picture and TOS: Ex Machina.  Mulzirak got mentioned in passing in DS9: “Q-Less.”  Caitians are a felinoid race introduced in TAS.
	Epsilon Canaris III was on the brink of war in TOS: “Metamorphosis,” and apparently things have not improved much in the ensuing century.
316	The Kyushu is a New Orleans-class starship that will be destroyed at the Battle of Wolf 359 (“The Best of Both Worlds”).  The Department of Temporal Investigations (also mentioned in passing on p. 48) was established in DS9: “Trials and Tribble-ations.”
	Captain Zimbata of the Victory was established (but unseen) in “Elementary, Dear Data.”
318	The story of Picard’s first meeting with Geordi La Forge was told in “The Next Phase.”  La Forge’s service under Zimbata was established in “Elementary, Dear Data,” and he was transferring from the Hood in “Encounter at Farpoint” (which also established DeSoto as that ship’s captain).
319	Admiral Hanson’s role as head of Long-range Threat Assessment and Response is consistent with his role in developing Borg defense technologies in “Best of Both Worlds.”
	Daran V is from TOS: “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” and Ex Machina.  The Alraki warlords were mentioned in my DS9 story “…Loved I Not Honor More.”
320	Scrooge and Ahab are both characters Patrick Stewart has played onscreen.  Stewart is well-known for his award-winning one-man theatrical version of A Christmas Carol.
	Risa is a resort planet introduced in “Captain’s Holiday.”  Picard was reluctant to visit it then, too.
321	Thomas Halloway was the captain of the Enterprise-D in the alternate timeline seen in “Tapestry.”  For more, see the anthology The Sky’s the Limit.
	“And after all the diplomatic and strategic successes you’ve scored in the past couple of years…”: Given that Picard was eventually assigned command of the Starfleet “flagship” and became their go-to guy for vital diplomatic or military missions, it was necessary to establish his reputation in those fields in a way that was consistent with his spending several years away from starship command.
Chapter 21 (June 19, 2363, and extensive reminiscences)
322	As Picard would later learn in “The Chase,” the First Humanoids seeded the primordial seas of many worlds with DNA programmed to encourage the eventual re-evolution of their form.  Since it took 4 billion years for this to happen on Earth, it should’ve been similarly gradual on other worlds, varying based on local conditions and chance.   Presumably the number of these worlds producing sentient humanoid (or “manraloid”) forms would increase over time, so there would have been fewer in the Manraloth’s day.  Also, perhaps in the wake of the Cataclysm, with advanced life having to evolve all over again, the biospheres already “preprogrammed” to produce humanoids may have had an edge over those that had to develop advanced life stochastically.
324	This “theatrically massive hand weapon” may be the same one Guinan wielded in Ten Forward in “Night Terrors.”
325	The Crux Arm is two arms in from ours, and according to ST Star Charts is the area where first contact with the Borg occurred in “Q Who.”
328-9	The anomalies peppering the Delta Quadrant were encountered throughout VGR.  The subspace corridors seen in VGR: “Dragon’s Teeth” may well be an intact remnant of the Manraloth subspace highways.  The interspatial fissures converging on the Small Magellanic Cloud were established in TLE: The Sundered and Titan: The Red King.
329	the unadorned, neotenous facial structure that many manraloids, including humans, tended to converge upon over evolutionary time: Neoteny is the retention of juvenile features in adult organisms.  Evolution often tends toward neoteny; flightless birds tend to resemble enlarged chicks of their flying ancestors, and humans have traits neotenous in chimpanzees, such as our facial structure and our large brain-to-body mass ratio.  Given that alien babies in ST tend to look more human than their adult forms (due to the impracticality of applying prosthetic makeup to infants), perhaps the human facial structure — already neotenous in comparison to Earth primates — is neotenous for ST-universe hominids in general.  The evolutionary tendency toward neoteny could thus help rationalize why so many ST humanoids look virtually or completely human.
331-2	The tale of the warrior king who repented and became a peaceful reformer is based on Ashoka, the great emperor of Maurya India.  The inclusive empire based on nominal slavery to the state is inspired by the Ottoman Empire.
334	Guinan’s Startrek.com biography gives her age as “well over 600 years.”  ST: Nemesis established that she had married 23 times, and “Evolution” established that she had “a lot” of children.
	My assumption that El-Auria was located in the Crux Arm (see p. 325 note) is based on Guinan’s statement in “Q Who” that she had been in the area before, combined with her urgency about leaving it.
335	The Sahndarans visited Earth during the time of Plato, as established in TOS: “Plato’s Stepchildren.”  The Skagarans taking human slaves from the 19th-century American West was established in ENT: “North Star.”  I wanted Guinan’s anthropologist friends to be the Preservers, following up on the effects of European colonization on Native Americans (TOS: “The Paradise Syndrome”). But the flashback was long enough without including this.
	Guinan’s acquaintanceship with Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was established in “Time’s Arrow,” which also depicted her meeting with Data and Picard in 1893 San Francisco.  I wanted to reveal that Guinan had initially fallen in with the financier Henry Huttleston Rogers, a closet philanthropist who promoted improved race relations, and had been introduced by Rogers to his friend Mark Twain.  However, Twain and Rogers did not meet until 1893, probably after the events of “Time’s Arrow.”  It’s possible Guinan introduced them, but it would’ve been after the events related here.
336-7	The destruction of El-Auria by the Borg a century before TNG was established in “Q Who.”  The refugees’ arrival in UFP space, and their subsequent encounter with the Nexus, was seen in Generations.
	I avoided using the name “Borg” here because I feel the name must be of human origin, short for “cyborg.”  True, it was Guinan who established that they were called that in “Q Who.”  But my assumption is that it was Magnus Hansen (father of Seven of Nine from VGR) who had coined that name in his research, and that Guinan had come across it during her time in the Federation sometime before “Q Who.”
338	Guinan’s special intuition about time was established in “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”  Its connection to her Nexus experience is from the script for GEN, though it was not included in the final film.
	Guinan’s tendency to go under false names is based on a scene in “Q Who” in which Q, upon hearing her addressed as “Guinan,” asks, “Is that your name now?”
Chapter 22 (July 14 & August 26, 2363)
341	Deanna’s 2359 graduation date is from her personnel file.  Her subsequent studies on Betazed were established in “Tin Man” and suggested by her involvement with Will Riker on Betazed for several years prior to 2361 (“Second Chances”).
	Deanna’s “icy” and uptight characterization here reflects the stiff persona of the character in TNG’s first season.
342	The junior officer’s skant was the “miniskirt”-type uniform worn by both male and female background crewmembers in TNG’s first season, and by Deanna in “Encounter at Farpoint.”
	Ian Troi’s friendship with Elias Vaughn was established in DS9: Avatar and depicted in TLE: The Art of the Impossible.
344	Ian’s fondness for Westerns, which he shared with his daughter, was established in “A Fistful of Datas.”
346	Is there evidence that Deanna and Picard knew each other before TNG?  In “We’ll Always Have Paris,” Deanna mentions to Picard that he has a tendency to bottle up personal issues.  But at that point, we hadn’t seen him dealing with any personal issues, unless you count his discomfort with the Crushers in the first couple of episodes.  It also stands to reason that the aloof Picard would not have been so willing to confide in Deanna if they hadn’t had a prior relationship.
348	Picard’s fateful encounter with the Nausicaans was established in “Samaritan Snare” and seen in “Tapestry.”  I made up Chemenek IV.
349	Picard’s childhood pattern of success was established in “Family.”  His failing the Academy entrance exam was established in “Coming of Age.”  His freshman victory in the Academy marathon was mentioned in “The Best of Both Worlds.”
Chapter 23 (October 8-10, 2363)
352	Kartikeya is an alternate name of the Tamil deity Murugan, who was raised by the Krittika or Kartika (the Indian name for the Pleiades).
356	“As flies to wanton boys…”: From King Lear, Act IV, Sc. i.
357	“You are a stranger to me”: Echoing Lear’s rejection of Cordelia in Act I, Sc. i.  Like Picard here, Lear mistook Cordelia’s honest devotion for betrayal.
	Captain ch’Regda is named for Edgar from Lear, though other Cybele crew are named in honor of TNG production staffers.  Cybele is a play on Cymbeline and an homage to my own story “Among the Wild Cybers of Cybele.”
358	Gororm:  Meant to be the “Aliens with long faces” seen in “Armageddon Game” and multiple other DS9 episodes.  I was uneasy introducing a major interstellar power that we would never see again in subsequent ST, so I decided to base most of the Carnelian species on unnamed background aliens that we did see “again” in DS9.
	coreward reaches: Toward the core of the galaxy, that is, and thus in the direction of the Federation.
Chapter 24 (October 21-25, 2363)
362	The exposition about the Alpha Persei cluster’s role in shaping local geography (and perhaps evolution) is pretty much true, aside from the Trek-universe interpolations.
363	The Thelian is named for the former Federation president, an Andorian introduced in in the Wildstorm comic Enter the Wolves.  The Tecumseh was mentioned in DS9: “Nor the Battle to the Strong” and established as Excelsior-class in the ST Encyclopedia.  The Malinche was seen in DS9: “For the Uniform.”  The Korolev class is from the ST Encyclopedia.  I named the Puttkamer for Dr. Jesco von Puttkamer, the NASA propulsion engineer who was the technical consultant to Star Trek: The Motion Picture.  The Nautilus was seen in DS9: “Tears of the Prophets.”
365	The Brunyg are intended to be the “Alien with boney exoskeletal head” glimpsed in DS9: “Emissary.”
366	Chromatophores are the tiny pigment-containing sacs that squids and other cephalopods use for communication and camouflage, changing color by inflating or deflating the sacs (essentially turning “pixels” of color on and off).
368	Captain Sanders’s first name was not given in “For the Uniform.”  Eric Pierpoint played the “Newcomer” George Francisco in Alien Nation.
	As with the Miranda class earlier, the sturdiness of the Excelsior design is offered as an explanation for why it stays in service for nearly a century.  The Excelsior was the prototype transwarp ship in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
	An ice dwarf is a dwarf planet like Pluto or Eris (the recently-discovered Kuiper Belt body that’s bigger than Pluto and triggered the recent debate over the redefinition of “planet”).  I used the term “ice dwarf” to dodge the whole planet/dwarf-planet controversy, given that the terminology remains in flux.
	Hipparcos 14047 is one of the twin blue stars mentioned on p. 359, a B9 main sequence star.  The other is Hip 14043, a B7.  They’re about 800 light-years from Earth.
370	Bodies like this ice dwarf often do have reddish-brown (“salmon”) surfaces due to hydrocarbon sludge or “tholins.”  A notable example is Sedna.
375	“Natasha Yar… A real tiger, that one”: A nod to my beloved brown-and-orange tabby cat Natasha.  The Tasha connection was also why I made this planet a Caitian colony.
	In “Legacy,” Picard said the following:
	The first time I  saw Tasha Yar, she was making her way through a Carnelian mine field to reach a wounded colonist. Her ship  had responded to their distress call, as had mine. When it was all over, I requested that she be assigned to the Enterprise.  Her ship’s captain owed me a favor.  In the months that followed, she never once failed to put the safety of the crew before her own.
	Since this would’ve been shortly before TNG, I knew the Carnelians and their minefield had to figure in the climax of TBA.  Since “carnelian” is the name of a gemstone, I decided to do something less obvious than making them aliens from the planet Carnelia (or Carnel, as suggested by the ST Chronology).
Chapter 25 (October 25 continuing)
378	The Organians stopped the war in TOS: “Errand of Mercy” by making all shipboard instruments and hand weapons too hot to handle.  Since combatants also found each other’s bodies painfully hot but were not themselves overheated, this may have been illusory.
380	“Whatever type of transwarp they’re using”: The term “transwarp” has been used for several distinct types of drive in ST, so I consider it a generic term for a whole class of faster-than-warp drives.  The Manraloth drive bears similarities both to Borg transwarp conduits and to the theoretical Krasnikov Tube.  It also strongly resembles a deus ex machina, given that it conveniently allows Picard to get to the black hole in time for the climax.
385	The image of Picard being stabbed from behind echoes his fight with the Nausicaans (see p. 348 note).  His father’s disappointment echoes “Tapestry” and his mother’s tea set was seen in “Where No One Has Gone Before.”
	Tasha’s homeworld of Turkana IV is from “Legacy.”  The rape gangs were mentioned in various first-season episodes.
386	Tasha’s sister Ishara is from “Legacy.”  Her cat was seen in flashback in “Where No One Has Gone Before.”  Her firsthand experience with drug addiction was implied in “Symbiosis.”  The novel Survivors elaborates on these hints and introduces the term “joy dust,” although many of its details are inconsistent with later canon.
387	The Tarkassian razorbeast was Guinan’s imaginary friend, as established in “Imaginary Friend” (imagine that).
389	suppressing electron tunneling in the thalamus: Once again I’m trying to rationalize telepathy in terms of the concept of quantum consciousness.
	Picard being out of uniform reflects Lear, who tore off his clothes during his descent into madness while a massive storm raged around him.  Guinan’s loss of her hat also symbolizes the loss of cosmic order.
390	“not quite in my perfect mind”: Another Lear paraphrase, from Act IV, Sc. vii.
Chapter 26 (October 25 continuing)
392	The Aulacri were seen in ST:TMP and named (and given tails) in Ex Machina.  See my ExM annotations.
396	The small orb is the computer core containing the patterns of the rescued survivors (see pp. 327-8).
399	“they would’ve just been developing multicellular life during the Manraloth Era”: Keep in mind that the Manraloth Era stretches back to maybe 5-600 million years ago.  Actually the first multicellular forms on Earth had arisen by 900 My ago, but the earliest fossils of multicellular life on land are 450-500 My old, though molecular evidence suggests they may have colonized the land much earlier.
Chapter 27 (mostly November 17, 2363)
403-4	Guinan’s comments about being angry for a long time are a paraphrase of Picard’s lines to O’Brien in “The Wounded.” Patrick Stewart’s delivery of those lines felt to me like he was speaking from hard experience, maybe even passing along advice he’d gotten from someone else.  It also fit the events of this novel perfectly.
	Picard’s willingness to see surrender as a valid option was seen in “Encounter at Farpoint” and “The Last Outpost.”
406	Giriaenn/Ariel brings it back to The Tempest, quoting Prospero in Act IV, Sc. i.
Chapter 28 (December 11-27, 2363)
408	As it turned out, the Enterprise spent most of its time in or near known space, rather than embarking on the kind of 15-year deep-space tour Varley describes.  But according to the TNGTM, that is the kind of mission the Galaxy class was designed for.  The change in the Enterprise‘s mission profile is discussed in Titan: Orion’s Hounds, p. 116.
409	I gave Argyle the first name Michael in honor of the late Michael Piller.
410	There is no evidence that Tasha Yar served on the Victory.  But I wanted the favor mentioned in “Legacy” to be something portrayed in the book, and the La Forge incident described in “The Next Phase” fit the bill.  “The Naked Now,” TNG’s second episode, implied an existing friendship/attraction between Geordi and Tasha, which is consistent with them serving on the same ship before the Enterprise.
411	Picard’s protest of Beverly Crusher’s posting to the Enterprise was established in “Encounter at Farpoint.”  The backstory of Picard’s unrequited love was spelled out in “Attached.”
	Admiral Hidalgo was mentioned in David Gerrold’s novelization of “Encounter at Farpoint.”  Gerrold’s interpolations in the book are inconsistent with later canon, and indeed with TBA, but I wanted to include an homage.
412	The story of how Picard chose Riker was told in “Farpoint” and “The Pegasus.”
413	The story of Riker jilting Troi was told in “Second Chances.”
414	Before becoming transporter chief O’Brien, Colm Meaney was seen in various bit parts in the first season of TNG, including the battle bridge flight controller in “Farpoint.”  “All Good Things” established that this was in fact O’Brien.
416	In “Lonely Among Us,” Worf griped that Picard expected his junior officers “to learn, learn, learn.”
Interlude
419	a realm where matter, energy, and thought became one: As mentioned by the Traveler in “Where No One Has Gone Before.”
420	The Douwd were introduced in “The Survivors.”
421	“The Voyager” is the name I ascribed in Ex Machina to the entity formed from the merger of V’Ger, Decker, and Ilia in ST:TMP.
422	“The Travelers tell me some of them are already on the verge”: Foreshadowing the Traveler’s interest in Wesley Crusher in “Where No One Has Gone Before.”
423	“Even he could be the one”: As Q says, you’ll see, if you read Q & A by Keith R. A. DeCandido.
424	I can’t cite a specific source, but it’s my understanding that Gene Roddenberry’s rationale behind calling the character Q was because of his role as humanity’s questioner or inquisitor.
	VGR: “Death Wish” suggested that the Q had used that name for themselves before this point, since “Quinn” had been imprisoned for three centuries and knew the name.  However, Quinn was still omniscient and would have known of this decision — and of course the Q have the power to make a decision in the present that affects the past.
Epilogue (early January 2364)
427	The dialogue and action here are based on the flashback scenes in “All Good Things.” I have assumed, however, that Tasha had her first-season haircut in the original timeline.
428	Picard’s reaction to his sight of the “feminine” Enterprise is another homage to David Gerrold’s “Farpoint” novelization.
429	“All Good Things” constrained me to use only Troi, Worf, and O’Brien at Picard’s arrival ceremony.  Assistant CMO Asenzi was mentioned in Gerrold’s novelization.
	The stardate given in the “All Good Things” flashback was 41148, but “The Drumhead” had previously established the stardate as 41124.  This would correspond to February 15 by the method described in the p. 3 note, but I have changed it to January to fit the usual convention for dating TNG seasons.
430	Torres was the conn officer in “Farpoint,” quick-frozen by Q.  I picked his first name in honor of TNG writer/producer Rene Echevarria. (Keith R.A. DeCandido’s later TNG novel Q & A would call him Ricardo Torres, however.)
431	Data’s lack of emotion was not actually codified until the early third season of TNG.  Originally he was conceived as simply emotionally inexperienced and underdeveloped, and was far more expressive.  In retrospect, that must be seen as a form of camouflage.
	Note that I snuck in a contraction: “I’ve also been practicing a more informal speaking style.”  Data used contractions routinely before “Datalore” asserted that he rarely used them.  Unfortunately, later episodes such as “The Offspring” assumed that he was completely incapable of forming contractions, rather than simply “tend[ing] to speak more formally” as “Datalore” had asserted.  But there were certainly times after “Datalore” where Data used contractions — generally in quoting others or reciting dialogue, but sometimes in his own person (although the actor has claimed he was simply talking fast).  He also uses contractions in various novels, notably in Immortal Coil, in which he says “I’m sorry” repeatedly on pp. 33-4.  I prefer the interpretation that he just speaks formally out of habit and preference, and can overcome that habit if he makes the effort.  I assume that in the first season, he used contractions as an affectation to blend in, but when he grew more comfortable with “being himself” he stopped making that extra effort.  But that conflicts with conventional wisdom, so I couldn’t make that explicit.  I simply tried to suggest it obliquely here.  Sneaky me….
	Note: Given the great distance from Earth to Deneb, I assume it would have taken several weeks at high warp (using the fastest possible “space lanes”) to reach Farpoint Station after this novel ends.  The pacing of the flashbacks in “All Good Things” implies that the events of “Farpoint” happen very shortly after Picard boards the ship, but strictly speaking there’s nothing to preclude a gap of several weeks between the first few flashback sequences occurring on the date Picard takes command and the ones occurring simultaneously with “Farpoint.”

Map of featured locations

The following map, adapted from the Known Space map in Foldout 2 of Star Charts by Geoffrey Mandel, shows the major star systems and areas featured in Parts II-IV of The Buried Age in relation to the Federation (in dark blue) and its neighbors.

(Click thumbnail to enlarge.)

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Ariel concept illustration

This is an approximation of how I envisioned Ariel, based on a photo of Claudia Black, my mental model for the character’s voice, but with proportions altered to fit the description in the text.  The “real” Ariel would have finer hair, larger eyes, sparklier skin, and more subtly blended stripe colors, but this is a surprisingly good approximation for half a day’s work with an outdated image-editing program.  The stripes are based on an image derived from the Mandelbrot Set fractal pattern.

(Click thumbnail to enlarge.)