The “telematter” drive that gets our characters to the story is based on teleportation studies reported in Nature,^[41]Science,^{[42], [43]}Physical Review Letters,^[44] and (more recently) everyone and their dog.^{e.g., [45]} The idea of transmitting antimatter specs as a fuel template is, so far as I know, all mine. To derive plausible guesses for Theseus’s fuel mass, accelleration, and travel time I resorted to The Relativistic Rocket,^[46] maintained by the mathematical physicist John Baez at UC Riverside. Theseus’ use of magnetic fields as radiation shielding is based on research out of MIT.^[47] I parked the (solar powered) Icarus Array right next to the sun because the production of antimatter is likely to remain an extremely energy-expensive process for the near future.^{[48], [49]}

The undead state in which Theseus carries her crew is, of course, another iteration of the venerable suspended animation riff (although I’d like to think I’ve broken new ground by invoking vampire physiology as the mechanism). Two recent studies have put the prospect of induced hibernation closer to realization. Blackstone et al. have induced hibernation in mice by the astonishingly-simple expedient of exposing them to hydrogen sulfide;^[50] this gums up their cellular machinery enough to reduce metabolism by 90%. More dramatically (and invasively), researchers at Safar Center for Resuscitation Research in Pittsburgh claim^[51] to have resurrected a dog three hours after clinical death, via a technique in which the animal’s blood supply was replaced by an ice-cold saline solution.^[52] Of these techniques, the first is probably closer to what I envisioned, although I’d finished the first draft before either headline broke. I considered rejigging my crypt scenes to include mention of hydrogen sulfide, but ultimately decided that fart jokes would have ruined the mood.