Summary

Back in the present day, Valentine, Chloe, and Gus are all wearing clothes from the early nineteenth century and lounging in the garden room. The table now holds a pyramid, a cone, and a pot of dwarf dahlias. Chloe is going through the newspaper, reading accounts of Bernard’s Byron discovery. Referring to an earlier conversation, Chloe asks Valentine if she is the first one to have thought of something and he replies in the negative. Chloe goes on to explain her idea that with a big enough computer, someone could predict the future drawing from the physical laws of motion. Valentine interrupts Chloe’s ruminations to tell her someone came up with that idea in the 1820s but discovered it wouldn’t work. Valentine explains math of this kind doesn’t work the way people used to think it did.

Chloe thinks it’s...