Axiom's End (Noumena, #1)

by Lindsay Ellis

Nils had leaked a few days after the Fremda Memo that the Altadena Event had a CIA code name, “Ampersand,” which had been colloquially adopted by everyone, even mainstream outlets.

CIA code names (they call them “cryptonyms,” edgy) in real life are way, way weirder and random than “Ampersand” and “Obelus.” Recent leaks (from Wikileaks, no less) have revealed such CIA ops code names as: Philosorapter, RickyBobby, ShoulderSurfer, SwampMonkey, Fight Club, RoidRage, Weeping Angel, EggsMayhen, Bald Eagle, BeeSting, MaddeningWhispers, The Gibson, JQJHENDRICK, Cotton Candy, YarnBall, the list goes on. If the CIA was giving these “meteor” events cryptonyms, then Ampersand and Obelus might have been named EggsMayhem and Fight Club.

“My job for seven years was to try.”

Luciana is asexual. It’s hard to write this sort of thing when not only is there no place it would come up naturally, but she’s not a point-of-view character. But even if she was, the language around gender and sexuality was very, very different in 2007, and I’m not a fan of this trend in historical fiction (especially in sci fi) where characters speak and think like progressives of today. Asexuality was not taken seriously by the mainstream back then, nor was it considered a legitimate form of sexualily by most (I was certainly guilty of this). It’s entirely possible that Luciana would not have the language for her own sexuality.

Cora Sabino is my name.

I’ve seen several people catch this, but the name Core is an anglicization of “Kore”, which is another name for Persephone.

The milkshake made her queasy.

This was originally a pomegranate milkshake, because I wanted to sneak a pomegranate into this story somewhere. My husband insisted I change it, because everyone in California knows that there have only ever been three milkshake flavors at In-N-Out--Strawberry, Chocolate and Vanilla. I did not know that, because I’m one of those people that thinks In-N-Out is the most overrated institution in this country.

“Similars.”

Similars are named for the homoioi, the ancient Spartan “warrior caste” meaning “men who are alike.”

“You should call me ‘Ampersand.’”

Lots of people have already figured this one out, but an Ampersand is a ligature for the Latin word for “and,” which is “et”.

“An individual amygdaline, a former technocrat Oligarch of the Superorganism your Central Intelligence Agency has code-named ‘Pequod.’ I was summoned by one person of the Fremda group in custody at ROSA, code-named ‘Čefo.’”

While there is definitely ~ * ~ d e e p s y m b o l i c m e a n i n g ~*~ in the name “Pequod,” which is the name of the ship in Moby Dick, the truth is I picked the name because I like the way the word sounded. “Queequeg” was in earliest drafts, but fortunately I got rid of it before anyone actually saw it.

“You … call yourself an ‘amygdaline’?”

The word “amygdaline” came about as a result of me using the word “almandine” incorrectly when describing Ampersand’s eyes, and it was only the copy editor that caught this (almandine is a purple gemstone, and doesn’t mean “almond-shaped.” Kind of like how “noisome” doesn’t mean “noisy,” what’s up with that?)

The crest on the back of his head was less triceratops and more like half a dozen thick, silvery banana leaves that curled downward like a rosebud when at rest but perked up like the petals of a sunflower when he was alert or excited (which was, at present, always).

Ampersand’s design is what I envision the mid-point between Geiger’s Xenomorph and Eve from Wall-E to be, unnerving and terrifying and beautiful to look at. I wanted amygdalines to look extremely nonhuman, but not alien to the point of goofy, or alien in a way that doesn’t make evolutionary sense. But in a lot of ways, amygdalines are physiologically, chemically and mentally way closer to human than one might argue is likely given the vastness of possibilities. Well, some of that is for narrative reasons, but mostly because if you go by the likelihood of certain chemical compounds colliding in a way that eventually creates life, it might not be so different from life on Earth as you might think. One of the books I read for research is The Vital Question by Nick Lane, which discusses theories on the origin of life. Obviously Lane doesn’t know for sure, but the long and short is, just based on what we know about chemistry and how things developed here on Earth, if something complex enough to eventually build spaceships evolved, it’s prooooobably carbon-based, it prooooobably evolved in ocean thermal vents, it proooobably needs water to survive, it’s proooobably going to have a bimodal sexes, it’s proooobably going to have bilateral symmetry (i.e. two halves of the body that mirror each other, as in humans), it’s prooooobably going to have two eyes (for depth perception,) it’s prooooobably going to be quadrupedal, it’s prooobably going to walk upright (hands that dextrous can’t be used for walking), and it’s proooobably non-aquatic (hard to figure out electricity if you’re in the water). And also owing to nature tending not to evolve things that cost more than they’re worth, you’re probably not going to see anything wild like six mouths or eighteen stomachs. Animals on earth that have extra limbs and eyes tend to be insects or spiders, and being much smaller and simpler can expend the energy to evolve these. The larger and more complex you are, the fewer bells and whistles you’re allowed (and an extra limb is a huge bell/whistle) For an organism on the level of complexity as a human, there may be a lot weird with the way it’s organized, but it’s not unlikely that they (or their ancestors) have a lot in common with humans, biologically.

“DHHS called the group ‘Fremda’ because ROSA uses Esperanto code words.

Though I came up with the premise back in 2010, I didn’t start writing it for YEARS because I could not figure out the naming system for these aliens. I didn’t want them to name themselves because of the language barrier, so how do their handlers name them? For a little while I was entertaining a Gargoyles approach and name them after streets in LA, just because then I could use names like “Hyperion” and “Cahuenga.” But I couldn’t figure out Ampersand, what would he be? Vermont? Santa Monica? Normandie? Would we call him “Norm?” I don’t remember exactly when I decided on Esperanto words, but since Esperanto was pretty big in hippie culture in the late 60’s and 70’s (William Shatner learned to speak it!) I figure it was probably on some ROSA person’s mind.

“A technocrat Oligarch.”

I have strong feelings on capitalization in genre fiction; I get that we need to indicate that the Thing is unique to this story, and the Purposefulness need be imparted, but generally when you’re dealing with genre fiction, things should be capitalized or not for a reason. Tolkien had it right--hobbits, elves, dwarves are not capitalized for the same reason human or men aren’t, but names for cultures like the Noldorin or the Haradrim are. So it goes here--a specialization (technocrat, stratocrat, propagandist) is not capitalized for the same reason occupations aren’t, but castes (Similar, Oligarch) are capitalized for the same reason castes are capitalized in English (Brahmin, Rajput, Kshaytria). “Amygdaline” and “human” are not capitalized, but Earth and Pequod Superorganism are. Maybe the trope that drives me the most crazy is the tendency to capitalize whatever the term is for your Bonded One, like “Finally, I have my Soulmeld.” You don’t capitalize “husband” why are you capitalizing Soulmeld, Tammy. Thus, “phyle” and “symphyle” and most of Ampersand’s terms aren’t capitalized.

Where’s the revolution? Ortega, Nils. “Where’s the Revolution?”

Nils is a big fan of Depeche Mode. They’re also big fans of his.

We’re heading into an election year.

People have asked me, does Obama exist in this universe? Well, I can’t say, but I will say that in this universe, Obama did not win the Senate race in the 2004 election.

They moved the Fremda group to the bunker at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex.

I came up with the structure and settings of this book long before I landed on the much more grounded-in-realism tone, to say nothing of setting it in some places that I simply could never go to in order to research. In the grand tradition of films like Independence Day, I decided to set it in places that are off-limits to most civilians but didn’t really think about the logistics of doing research places that are, by design, very top secret. You used to be able to get tours of NORAD, but 9/11 ruins everything. So I had to buy books either written during the cold war or self-published by airmen who used to work there. Langley is a little easier to get information on, but you can’t just walk on in. Lesson learned, Truth of the Divine takes place mostly in places I can either research or have been.

“His language runs through an algorithm that translates our language into Pequod-phonemic and back, which he delivers to his interpreter.”

If Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life was inspired by the Sapir-Worff hypothesis, the theory of this book is informed by Noam Chomsky’s theories on universal language and the language acquisition. Chomsky says there’s a consistent set of characteristics that all languages have (this is disputed by other linguists), giving them an almost algorithmic quality, and that the human brain is set up only for that set of characteristics. Tricky thing here is since our brains have the device for human language, they wouldn’t for non-human languages, which would make the process of learning a full alien language almost impossible, at least with our current technology. In effect, Chomsky sees the brain as the hardware, and language as the software, but a different software just doesn’t work with this hardware, as the human brain is coded for human language.

and that was when he was feeling generous.

Ampersand is a Scorpio.

The others, about ten of them called “diplocrats,” spent their days cowering behind Esperas.

I didn’t want to make up any words for this book; I don’t think Ampersand is at a point of sophistication where it would occur for him to make up words, so instead he just appropriates existing ones. You could argue “symphyle” counts as made up, but “phyle” is an English word from the Greek root, and the Greek word for “fellow tribesman” is symphyletai. The only word I full-on made up was “diplocrat.”

In her brief research, she remembered what was so noteworthy about the 1350s—it was right after the Black Death had wiped out nearly half the population of Europe and vast swaths of India and China.

This was not meant to imply that the Superorganism caused the Black Death.

“Are you nesting?”

Recent developments regarding having now researched what the Omegaverse entails, I question my use of this word.

George Walker Bush announced last night that he will resign as the forty-third president of the United States at noon today.

One of the most common questions I get asked is “Why did you set this in 2007?” There are some marketing reasons -- 20 year cycles of nostalgia are a thing and I figured best to get in on that early -- but the real reason is that I came up with the basic premise in 2010. By the mid-2010’s when I was actively submitting it, I came upon the problem of not knowing what kind of ecosystem someone of Cora’s age looked like, or how that melded with the concept I’d chosen. So by the time I started giving it serious attention in 2018, it became obvious to me that the story I had come up with just did not work in the nebulous present day, as most other contemporary books do. The political situation didn’t make sense, the technology no longer made sense, and I didn’t want to rewrite the story to account for cultural and technological shifts. But rooting it in 2007 also helped me figure out the trajectory of the series as a whole, and to create an entirely different alternate timeline, with some similarities and some differences. The consequences of this plot point will become much more impactful in later books.

Mind reading,’ as you conceive it is not possible.”

This book is extremely tropey, and while I leaned hard into some--pair bonding, big superpowered bad, government hiding aliens--I tried to avoid others, and was surprised how repetitive I had to get with certain to make it clear that they did NOT apply here. For instance, readers of early drafts had a tendency to assume Ampersand could read minds, even though much of the plot hinges on his inability to do so. People also tended to think the Superorganism is a hivemind--it’s not, at least, no more than we are now with the Internet. I’ve heard that some have a hard time visualizing Ampersand and just kind of envision a regular grey alien.

“Yes, you do,” he said. “But I am not human.”

Thanks for reading! The second installment, Truth of the Divine, what is in many ways the book I conceived first. I’ve heard it compared to act two of Into the woods—How does society cope with a first contact scenario where there’s no big battle and the world doesn’t end, but there are no clear answers? And what of our two protagonist, not two innocent childlike creatures in an ET heartbond, but deeply emotionally damaged adults? Stay tuned!