Surya asked Douglas Phillips:

I really liked the idea of 'Core' being some kind of AI (as I understand so far) as opposed to being a 'living being'. Will there be any more quantum books, and if so, would they touch upon the Why and How of Core's existence ? It would be interesting to also know how Core passes operational information around given the limitation of speed of information transmission capped at speed of light.

Douglas Phillips I love this question. I've thought about first contact with an advanced civilization most of my life, read lots of sci-fi, and learned all I could from astronomers and life scientists. The idea of a gatekeeper (a standard first contact point who represents a consortium of advanced civilizations) made sense to me, but any gatekeeper would need to be a combination of a security fence, worthiness filter, welcome committee, and teacher wrapped up in one - thus an all-purpose AI seemed more likely than a biological individual.

Spoiler alert. Core's "birth" was never mentioned in the books, but it has probably fulfilled the gatekeeper role for millions of years - a steady, sure way of introducing new members to the consortium. Offsetting Core into a bubble of 4D space provides the technology filter for new members - you can't communicate with Core until you've learned how to compress space. Likewise, Core can avoid the light speed limit, because it also can compress a chosen direction in 3D space to almost nothing. But Core can't possibly know in advance where all the civilizations might live. 3D space is big and searching every possible planet is a task too big even for a moon-sized cybernetic AI. Thus, Core waits patiently until it detects 4D activity somewhere in the galaxy, then sends a test to that location to find out if whoever is stirring up space is worthy!

As of this writing, there are 4 books in the Quantum Series. I'm pondering a 5th for 2023.

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