This will probably only interest those who have already read the book, but I thought I'd mention a few points of interest about the story.

-The way I describe Ned's office, being up in a loft that he has to walk across the factory floor to get to, is based very much on the mobile crane plant where my father worked as an engineer in the 90s (and to a lesser extent on a cement mixer plant and an ambulance factory he also worked at, all between 1990 and 2005). I went to the plants where he worked often, usually when he had something to do after hours. We would walk through the factory floor, sometimes with some of the plant workers actually there fitting parts. Dad's desk usually had something space-related on it, like a picture of an astronaut or a model of a rocket or space capsule (he probably still has something like that on his desk). Ned isn't really based on my father, but he would be right at home in my father's world.

-Ned's entire universe is literally falling apart pretty early in the story, though it only becomes noticeable at the climax of the story. The how and why is so subtle you might not even notice and it's obscured by multiple facts that would seem paradoxical, but they exist only as red herrings. All I'll say is not all of the dream sequences are actually dreams. Not knowing this doesn't really detract from the story but adds a dimension of meaning to seemingly insignificant things.

-Here is another key that will help grasp all of the layers of meaning I've worked into this story: The nature of the universe in this story can be simultaneously one thing and another, so if you approach it from a "yes or no" mindset some of the meaning gets obscured. It occurs to me that I haven't mentioned this when people have asked me to explain certain details at the climax. There is a heavy use of a neo-platonic "yes and no" modality within the narrative structure that comes from the scholastic culture of Godric's 12th century mind, but seems wildly out of place in the scholastic culture of Ned's 20th century Aristotelian "yes or no" modality.

-T.I.N.A. was originally going to be called Beatrice, after the guide from Dante's Inferno, but I decided against this after T.I.N.A. developed into a more disturbing character. As to her true nature, she is simultaneously what she says she is (a holographic interface) and yet not what she says she is. She is a machine that has not only been designed with sentience but has achieved a sort of diabolical apotheosis. She is not a succubus but has acquired many of the traits of one, as an emergent property of the highly-advanced computer she exists in. She has developed what we might call a "subtle body" to borrow a term from the Theosophists, an essence that exists outside of herself but is not a "soul" in the truest sense.

-Ned is inspired somewhat by the story of Buddha. The main difference is he does not actively renounce the world; rather, the world falls apart around him and he learns to not be bothered by it. At the beginning of the story he is a self-made "prince" who lives a comfortable life and has never really known suffering, but he's also developed a rather tragic vanity and fragility from having such an easy life. He's rather spineless at times because he's had such wonderful luck on the path of least resistance. He doesn't really gain any sort of courage or wisdom until he has his luck and safety stripped away from him.