I wrote the bug scenes.  But I did dream vaguely that Zanne observed life in Vanikke getting steadily more bizarre.

As mentioned before, Deirdre's, Jake's, and Randy's reminiscences about Alonzo Valley refer to events  which happened in dreams.  So did the distant shelling which she listened to while reminiscing.  The former came to me in childhood, the latter in the first few years of my marriage.  I just dreamed the flash of lights in the distance, beyond night hills, all visual, no sound—at least that's all that I remembered on waking; I didn't even know whether lightning or war caused it.  But David heard me sleep-talk, saying that it indeed involved a battle and that the shelling had deafened me.  My therapist said it was the first time anybody brought a dream of their own to her as reported by a third party.

I dreamed that Zanne did, indeed meet with the President of Vanikke over a meal, with his cabinet present.  So I set that up.

I drew the firecracker-making from dreams of Robin Royale.  He liked that prank.

I dreamed about hiding Kiril under a pot, and of being Kiril under the pot, too. Only much later did I learn that my maternal grandfather, as a child, got shoved under a cauldron to "hide him from the Indians".  On further inquiry I learned that these were Indians upset over him being raised among White men (he being an Indian, himself) and wanting to kidnap him so as to raise him in the culture.  What a different life I might have had, if they'd succeeded!