So a reader dropped into my DMs after Chapter 2 with actual JPL ephemeris data. Not "hey, isn't Mars far away," but the Earth-Mars separation for the specific week in April 2011 my scene is set in, cross-referenced against the speed of light, with the round-trip delay calculated out to the minute. I want that on the record, because it is exactly the kind of reader I hope this story finds.
We went back and forth on it, and the conversation ended up covering a lot of ground: FTL comms, inertial dampening, why a technology this old doesn't bother explaining itself. Good questions, the kind that make a story better for having been asked.
The upshot is that Chapter 1 now has a short new section, right after the note on timeline, called "A note on the science." It lays out plainly, that this isn't hard sci-fi like The Expanse, and that a few things in this universe — instant communication, an eighteen-hour trip to Mars, a body that survives that trip — aren't separate hand-waves. They're one very old, very advanced technology, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise or explain it. If the physics and the story disagree, the story wins, and now you'll know that going in.
If you've been wondering about the same things and were too polite to ask, this one's for you too. And if you've got a launch window and a delta-v budget you'd like me to double check, my inbox remains open.
— CCTW