my friend, Rabbi David J. Zucker, for his support, but more importantly, for his interest in this work of mine so far outside his normal interests

the members of the Colorado Springs Writing Workshop, for the months they indulged my struggle to improve my writing skills, including Jeanne Cortinas, Pat Sloss, Jack Burkhead, Mark Francis, Pam Jessen, Georgeanne & Steven Nelson, Carla May, Andrea Alton, John Hudson, Keith Baugues, Ed Bryant, Jennifer Roberts, Sasha Miller, Patricia Coleman, and Barbara Nickless who put me in touch with this group, and special thanks to John Stith for his kindness.

Carol Word, Russian teacher at Cherry Creek High School. Her devotion to accuracy and her language would make her welcome citizen of Yeibichai. I did, however, have to beg off one of her recommendations. She advised me to use "mezhdunarodnaya," which means "international," as the adjective in Yeibichai's name for its Global Electronic Village. Instead, I chose "mirnaya," which means "global" or "peaceful" because I liked the "peaceful" as well as "global" aspect of the word and wanted to avoid the implication of nations per se on Yeibichai. I hope Carol will forgive me.

Kathie Gully, librarian at the Denver Museum of Natural History

Jerome Roy of Hamburg, Deutschland (whose name I picked off a Javascript list-serve) who has been most kind to share his native language with me. He's working to become both a programmer and a linguist, an admirable combination in this day of globalization.

Miguel Jordan for his help with Harlan's native language, Castellano Chileno, the Castilian Spanish of Chile, and his niece Paola Klinger, who worked hard with her family here in the U.S.A. and in Chile to fit their words into my scheme