Notes For Part 1: Decisions

Locations:

• The location of most of the book is an area similar to Colorado Springs, Colorado.
• The reservoir and road are based on real places with the same names, and the location of the crash is an approximation based on satellite photos and elevation data. 
• The photo used for the book cover art was taken in the general vicinity of Garden of the Gods.

Organizational Relationships:

• Alex, Cathy, and Henderson work for the investigative division of a city police department, which is (crudely) modeled on the Colorado Springs Police Department. They work general crimes.
• Gary is an investigator for a county sheriff's office, which is modeled on El Paso County.
• The sheriff's office is investigating the crash site because the crash was on unincorporated land within the county. Although technically the sheriff's office has primary jurisdiction for most investigations throughout the county, in practice the local police departments handle incidents within their borders and will assist in any other investigations at the request of the sheriff's office.
• ServoBiome is a fictional multinational corporation involved in multiple businesses, whose corporate offices and research division are located in an industrial park similar to Denver's Tech Center.

Characters:

• Barb's cousin Anne and Anne's husband Pete are the main characters in Lights Out.
• Generally, first names are used to reference main characters and last names are used for other characters.
• Physical descriptions of people in the story are introduced where they are relevant to the narrative based on focus and plot. Following are some details:

Technologies:

• The navigational system in David's SUV is an extrapolation of current autonomous navigation technology. As a fictional character, his role in research and development of this technology is also purely fictional.
• Recording gear used by Gary at the crash site is pure fabrication, and is assumed to be standard issue for county investigators since the county has money to spend on new technology. Note that the city investigators still use cell phones for communication, which is due to the city's comparative lack of budget.

Miscellaneous:

• The description of David's understanding environmental degradation matches the picture emerging from the author's research.  Note that verification by Anne and Pete does not imply its acceptance by the scientific community in the real world, though there are many commonalities.
• David's state of mind, and apparent reasons for it, are drawn from the author's experience as related in the memoir chapter of the book Death Stoppers Anthology.