In the chap­ter “Lisa Simp­son and Roya Shams,” the sto­ry begins with Lisa encoun­ter­ing Roya, Cyrus’s moth­er, in a sur­re­al and stark white room that con­trasts with their vibrant appear­ances. Roya express­es sur­prise at meet­ing Lisa, who intro­duces her­self as Cyrus’s friend. Their con­ver­sa­tion reveals that Cyrus has been absent from Roy­a’s life for years, prompt­ing Lisa to won­der whether Roya can see him. Roya’s reply implies a deep­er under­stand­ing of exis­tence: she can­not wit­ness the liv­ing world in the way Lisa expects.

As their dia­logue unfolds, they explore the idea of the but­ter­fly effect and the com­plex nature of time. Roya argues that peo­ple often over­look the sig­nif­i­cance of their present-day deci­sions, focus­ing instead on past and future deci­sions, while con­stant­ly neglect­ing how their actions rip­ple through time. The room begins to morph, trans­form­ing into a famil­iar space for Lisa, seem­ing­ly rep­re­sent­ing her child­hood bed­room, as they dis­cuss the nature of influ­ence and con­se­quence.

Roya shares a poignant anec­dote about her child­hood ambi­tion of becom­ing an “oceanog­ra­ph­er florist,” inspired by her uncle’s flower-sell­ing busi­ness and her fas­ci­na­tion with coral reefs. This rev­e­la­tion brings forth the harsh truth about the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of corals, link­ing their dis­cus­sion to broad­er envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences. Lisa, now vis­i­bly small­er and more child­like, tack­les the nuanced con­ver­sa­tion about the rela­tion­ship between beau­ty and destruc­tion.

In a moment of intro­spec­tion, Roya pon­ders how to nav­i­gate beau­ty with­out caus­ing harm, while Lisa urges her to refrain from try­ing to reduce every­thing to mere sym­bols or mean­ings. The sto­ry hints at the com­plex­i­ties of exis­tence, the fleet­ing nature of life, and the impact of human actions on the world around them. Their con­ver­sa­tion is lay­ered with meta­phys­i­cal themes, illus­trat­ing the con­nec­tions between past, present, and future, ulti­mate­ly reflect­ing on the dif­fi­cul­ties of under­stand­ing life’s intri­cate web and the respon­si­bil­i­ty it entails.

The chap­ter ends with Lisa engag­ing in a mys­te­ri­ous action, play­ing a sax­o­phone that sig­ni­fies a deep­er con­nec­tion to the world around them and the mer­cy of ani­mals, leav­ing read­ers to pon­der life’s com­plex­i­ties along­side them.

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