Origin Story:
Exhausting...

In the original draft, there was a series of scenes in the first hundred or so pages that paid homage to the first five Star Trek series, the original through Voyager. It hinted at the fact that the Cosmic Union was slowly being taken over by an outside force that was guiding people's minds through an ever expanding network of nanites. Due to length of the book and how little this added to the main storyline, they were removed to focus on the main cast of characters.

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There was also a series of scenes involving Parallax in a cabin. She meets a group of four individuals. Each begin vanishing. One goes off into the never ending snowstorm, another floats up into the air. One starts out as a younger woman who rapidly ages and then disappears into her room as an elder version of herself. The last simply vanishes inside of his room which becomes empty when he does so. Each represents one of the four Oria. That led to the introduction of Eve. It was cut to streamline an already complicated story with a massive cast.

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The last major change was that Zoon was a part of the story until the end, including the final fight. Having him stay behind was a comfortable way for him to exit the series while allowing for Hallie to emerge as a new crew member.

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Eve was a unique experience. Her scenes were re-written several times. At one point, she was aware of the author. She would often talk to him. The final version was the end result of dozens of attempts to get it just right without her breaking the fourth wall. This novel had dozens of re-writes per scene, having to change it, fix it, throw out the original idea and start all over since there was so much to address and resolve to conclude this massive four book story arc.