Detective-Lieutenant Gene Trimble suspects that the recent spate of suicides and violent crime is somehow connected to the discovery that the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics is real and each of those worlds can be traveled to.

An accident near a black hole has seemingly doomed Kevyn Shalamarn along with her copilot and her AI, until they are pulled into a far future that could have been inspired by Frank Tipler’s Omega Point cosmology. The trip to the future seems to be in the domain of relativistic time dilation rather than time travel, and it’s unclear whether the trip back is actual time travel or some form of quantum physics mashed up with simulations.

At the moment when the speedometer on the Aether spaceship clicked over from .999999c to 1.00000c, a collective cheer erupted up in the ITTDB Citadel. Was it a jaw-dropping dramatic moment? Seems unlikely, but we were looking for something to cheer for in this cryptic story of three men who headed to the future via relativistic time travel, only to find themselves trapped in post-apocalyptic outer space and quantum technobabble.

After thirty-something Nora Seed kills herself, she arrives as a possibly metaphorical library with an infinite number of books containing her possible lives, each one of which she may try out, always starting on the night of her suicide.

For me, the depiction of Nora’s suicidal ideation and eventual killing of herself were dismissive of those who face depression every day, and the outcome was fictionally romanticized in a way that may induce suicide rather than showing understanding and encouragement to seek out help when life is dark. I don’t see this as intentional by the author.