I don’t want to give it all away, but very little about this book is arbitrary. The plots, the names, the characters, and the events are all full of Easter eggs. But, I don’t want to make that too obvious because they were meant for you to find, not for me to point them out. However, since you were curious enough to click this link I might as well get you started.
So, what kind of Easter eggs are in this book? Well, for example, every single character in the story (with a name) represents something, not someone. Ethan gets his name from the word ethanol, which is the active ingredient in alcohol. If you’ll notice, Ethan is always the one who gets everyone drunk. The excuse is that he is a rich kid with access to his parent’s alcohol, but the truth is he is alcohol incarnate.
The plots have their eggs as well. The third story, “Gas” is preceded by the definition for the word “homage” for a reason. That particular story is (among other things) an homage to three other works that I love and respect. The first section “Pressure” is an homage to Shakespeare’s “Much Ado about Nothing.” Notice that nothing really happens throughout the section, and that the misunderstanding is based on false information. There’s a whole ordeal over nothing. The title is also representative of the story because the scenes are full of social pressures and a buildup of unnecessary stress. The second section “Volume” is an homage to Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Also Spräch Zarathustra.” In Nietzsche’s work, a man is in a cave until he feels enlightened. Ray is in a dark closet and doesn’t come out until he is (relatively) enlightened. This section is also full of more conversational substance, or volume. If you know the plots of Much Ado and Also Spräch, you should notice a lot of correlations. Finally, the third section is a quick homage to “The Sound of Music.” The title of this section, “A Constant of Proportionality” completes the three fundamental aspects of gases. Ray is that constant, and it’s no coincidence that rays of light are drops of golden sun.
And, here’s one more to ponder. The word “sublime” is used in the story “Gas” when Ray has a moment where an old (solid) belief immediately leads to a journey into the abstract (gas). The processes of a solid bypassing the liquid phase when becoming a gas is sublimation.
I hope you consider these things after you read it and it motivates you to re-read it with a different frame of mind. Though the plots and dialogues may seem average or arbitrary, I assure you they’re not.