No story is written in a vacuum, but this story, in particular, would not exist if it were not for a very special group of young people. The people I speak of are the students who were in the George R.R. Martin author study course I taught for the Orange County School of Arts’ Creative Writing Conservatory two years ago. For our final project in the class, the students and I created a shared world we all could write in, a world that encompassed the full variety of genres Martin himself has written in—not only fantasy, but also sci-fi and horror. PAGE FAULT began as an introductory vignette for that shared world project, and although it developed into something more than that, the story is still very much indebted to the rich imaginations of my students. I’d like to thank them, as well as Jim Blaylock (who convinced Martin to come speak to the Creative Writing Conservatory that semester), Abbe Levine, Josh Wood, Liz Kracht, Mandy Burke, and my two writing groups, the Biscuits and the Wordmongers, particularly Eric Tryon and Ahimsa Kerp.