Summary

Pages 114 – 121 (Narrative present) Dr. Banks describes, to her daughter, a time when her daughter was 13 and tried to keep her distance when they will be going shopping, and how she will become angry when Dr. Banks refuses to walk separately from her. Dr. Banks comments on how suddenly her daughter seemed to become resentful rather than happy being with her mother: “Living with you,” she says, “will be like aiming for a moving target; you’ll always be further along than I expect” (115).

(Past) Dr. Banks’ struggles to write a Heptapod B sentence are interrupted by the excited arrival of Gary, who tells her there has been a breakthrough in communicating with the heptapods about physics and mathematics. He diagrams the scientific formula (Fermat’s Principle, relating to how light travels at a different angle through water than through air) that had been shown...