In Chap­ter XVII, the group, hav­ing trav­eled towards the town of Emer­ald, encoun­ters Sam­son, one of the nar­ra­tor’s broth­ers, who appears qui­et­ly beside Fish while hold­ing an emp­ty bag of pota­to chips. Lill, sur­prised by Sam­son’s arrival, learns he is sev­en years old and not very talk­a­tive. Fish express­es their hunger, not­ing it’s well past sup­per. In response, Lill, a wait­ress at the Emer­ald Truck Stop Din­er, acknowl­edges her own tar­di­ness and express­es sym­pa­thy towards the group after hear­ing about their trou­bles. She offers to treat them to a meal, includ­ing banana cream pie, which sur­pris­es every­one, espe­cial­ly Sam­son, who rarely speaks. His husky voice, full of long­ing for banana cream pie, light­ens the mood and brings laugh­ter among the group.

Arriv­ing at the din­er, they find it illu­mi­nat­ed by neon lights and bustling with vehi­cles, indi­cat­ing a busy set­ting. Lester, the bus dri­ver, parks in a back alley clut­tered with garbage, apol­o­giz­ing for not let­ting them off clos­er to the restau­rant. Lill guides the chil­dren through the neglect­ed alley, and they find Sam­son walk­ing con­fi­dent­ly between Lill and Lester, although he is still anx­ious.

As they near the park­ing lot, the nar­ra­tor spots a hand emerg­ing from a pile of soiled clothes behind a dump­ster, trig­ger­ing alarm and con­cern. Despite Will’s appre­hen­sion that the man might just be drunk, the nar­ra­tor insists on check­ing the man’s con­di­tion, recall­ing the state of their own father, Pop­pa. Ignor­ing Will’s urg­ing to move on, the nar­ra­tor kneels beside the home­less man and reach­es out to feel for a pulse, con­cen­trat­ing on wak­ing him up.

How­ev­er, instead of hope, the nar­ra­tor hears a voice of despair echo­ing in her mind, reveal­ing the man’s deep-seat­ed pain and regret. This real­iza­tion shat­ters her belief in her abil­i­ty to help, bring­ing a pro­found sense of use­less­ness and sor­row. The encounter leads her to despair over her savvi­ness, wrestling with the wish that she could be like her father, free from the bur­dens of abil­i­ty, hope, and sub­se­quent heartache.

In the qui­et embrace of an ordi­nary day in New York City on Sep­tem­ber 4, 2014, Hen­ry and Addie linger in bed, wrapped in the inti­ma­cy of shared moments and whis­pered names. As morn­ing turns to after­noon, they resist the for­ward march of time, bask­ing in a cocoon of sto­ries and mem­o­ries, a trea­sure trove of expe­ri­ences that Hen­ry will nev­er doc­u­ment. Each sto­ry Addie shares, from fairy pools on the Isle of Skye to swim­ming in crys­tal-clear waters, is a tes­ta­ment to a life lived beyond the ordi­nary, a nar­ra­tive of unseen won­ders and for­got­ten days.

Hen­ry, con­sumed by a fear of the inevitable, grap­ples with the fragili­ty of their time togeth­er. The act of get­ting up, the sim­ple motion of con­tin­u­ing with the day, feels like a sur­ren­der to the relent­less pace of time. Yet, there’s a recog­ni­tion of life’s per­sis­tent march, an acknowl­edg­ment of the tran­sient nature of their hap­pi­ness. Despite his reluc­tance, Hen­ry’s phys­i­cal hunger sig­nals a return to the mun­dane, a reminder that even in the face of pro­found con­nec­tion, life’s basic needs per­sist.

Addie, ever the bea­con of light against Hen­ry’s storm of anx­i­ety, gen­tly leads him back into the world. Her tales fill the air as she cooks, a final ges­ture of giv­ing, a shar­ing of moments that Hen­ry will car­ry with him. As they step out­side, the real­i­ty of time’s pas­sage becomes pal­pa­ble. The day’s sim­plic­i­ty is over­shad­owed by a sense of urgency, a real­iza­tion that time is always a step ahead, leav­ing them with moments that are always just shy of enough.

Yet, in the face of this relent­less pur­suit, Addie offers a per­spec­tive filled with both wis­dom and res­ig­na­tion. Liv­ing three hun­dred years, she sug­gests, is not so dif­fer­ent from liv­ing a sin­gle day; it is about embrac­ing each sec­ond as it comes. This phi­los­o­phy of pres­ence, of liv­ing moment to moment, encap­su­lates the essence of their day together—a real­iza­tion that life, whether mea­sured in cen­turies or sec­onds, is about the con­tin­u­ous accu­mu­la­tion of nows, a series of present moments stitched togeth­er by mem­o­ry and expe­ri­ence.

On New Year’s Eve 2013 in New York City, amidst a tumul­tuous par­ty in a Bed-Stuy apart­ment known as the Cas­tle, Hen­ry finds him­self in a moment of deep intro­spec­tion and desire for gen­uine con­nec­tion. The crowd­ed, rau­cous scene, filled with super­fi­cial inter­ac­tions and fleet­ing moments of close­ness, pro­pels him out­side to the frigid soli­tude of a fire escape. There, the cold air and qui­et of the night offer Hen­ry a brief respite from the chaos inside and a chance to reflect on his rela­tion­ships and self-per­cep­tion.

Tan­gled in an aim­less encounter with a guy named Mark (or Max or Mal­colm), Hen­ry quick­ly real­izes the hol­low­ness of their inter­ac­tion. His request for the stranger to stop advances not because of dis­in­ter­est but from a deep­er, unar­tic­u­lat­ed yearn­ing for authen­tic­i­ty and mean­ing in con­nec­tions with oth­ers. Rob­bie, Hen­ry’s host and a part of his trio of friends includ­ing Bea, momen­tar­i­ly dis­rupts their encounter, cast­ing an unspo­ken ten­sion over their friend­ship.

Flee­ing from the noise and inten­si­ty of the par­ty to the fire escape, Hen­ry is joined by Bea, his close friend, who climbs out to sit with him in the cold. Their con­ver­sa­tion unfolds lay­ers of their rela­tion­ship, reveal­ing Robbie’s unrec­i­p­ro­cat­ed feel­ings for Hen­ry and Bea’s affir­ma­tions of Hen­ry’s worth, which Hen­ry finds hard to accept due to his own inse­cu­ri­ties. Despite her kind words, Hen­ry sens­es a dis­con­nect between who he is and how Bea per­ceives him, illus­trat­ing his strug­gle with self-iden­ti­ty and accep­tance.

As they dis­cuss the exchange of one’s soul for the abstract notion of hap­pi­ness or love, Hen­ry’s admis­sion of his deep­est desire—to be loved—highlights his inner con­flict and the real­iza­tion that love, if not freely giv­en, lacks authen­tic­i­ty. Bea’s attempt to rejoin the par­ty and her deci­sion to stay when Hen­ry does­n’t fol­low under­scores their bond. Yet, as the new year arrives with cel­e­bra­tions and an oblig­a­tory kiss from Bea, Hen­ry is left ques­tion­ing his choic­es, under­scored by a poignant regret for what the night has revealed and altered.

In this chap­ter, the themes of lone­li­ness, self-dis­cov­ery, and the human need for real con­nec­tion res­onate against the back­drop of a city that nev­er sleeps. Hen­ry grap­ples with his long­ing for mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships, the per­cep­tion of oth­ers ver­sus his self-image, and the elu­sive nature of hap­pi­ness and love—a reflec­tion of youth­ful yearn­ing and exis­ten­tial doubt amidst the ephemer­al excite­ment of New Year’s Eve in New York City.

In New York City, on a delight­ful­ly bet­ter day with the sun out and the air not so cold, Addie rev­els in the end­less vibran­cy and scale of the city. Unlike small­er towns, New York offers an inex­haustible array of cul­ture, food, and art that she can con­sume vora­cious­ly every day with­out ever run­ning out of new expe­ri­ences. It’s the city’s ever-chang­ing land­scape, with its hid­den secrets and con­stant reshuf­fling, that cap­ti­vates her most. On this par­tic­u­lar day, she stum­bles upon “The Last Word,” a quaint book­store hid­den down a short flight of steps, its once-pur­ple awning now fad­ed. Despite believ­ing she had explored every nook of the city, Addie is thrilled to find some­thing new, a tes­ta­ment to New York’s cease­less abil­i­ty to sur­prise.

Inside, Addie finds her­self in a labyrinth of lit­er­a­ture, the shop brim­ming with books of all con­di­tions and ages, far from the orga­nized steril­i­ty of oth­er book­stores. The place is occu­pied by a few oth­er patrons, includ­ing an old­er white man, a styl­ish Black girl engrossed in an art book, and a mys­te­ri­ous cat with amber eyes. As Addie explores, she is approached by Hen­ry, a gen­tle and human pres­ence amidst the maze of books, who offers assis­tance. Despite his help­ful demeanor, Addie declines and con­tin­ues to browse alone.

The explo­ration leads her past gen­res and col­lec­tions, each elic­it­ing con­tem­pla­tion or mem­o­ries, until an acci­den­tal encounter with Hen­ry and a mis­ad­ven­ture with a Greek copy of “The Odyssey” draws them into a brief inter­ac­tion out­side. In this moment, Hen­ry, dis­play­ing an unex­pect­ed kind­ness, offers the book to Addie as a gift rather than accus­ing her of theft. This action, cou­pled with the inter­rup­tion by the Black girl from ear­li­er inquir­ing about call­ing the police, cements a pecu­liar moment of con­nec­tion between Addie and Hen­ry, one marked by mis­un­der­stand­ing, curios­i­ty, and an almost-grat­i­tude. Henry’s deci­sion to allow Addie to keep the book despite their awk­ward encounter leaves her with more ques­tions than answers, and as she walks away, the city’s propen­si­ty for change and chance encoun­ters once again asserts itself, open­ing up new nar­ra­tives in its wake.

read in the pre­vi­ous chap­ters about the ter­ri­ble agency of vril.

The chap­ter empha­sizes the dis­tinct soci­etal struc­ture and tem­po­ral com­pre­hen­sion of the Vril-ya, focus­ing on their unique sub­di­vi­sion of time reflect­ing their sep­a­ra­tion from ter­res­tri­al con­di­tions. Their day is seg­ment­ed into twen­ty hours, divid­ed into peri­ods for rest, labor, and leisure, reflect­ing an effi­cient allo­ca­tion of time har­mo­nized with their soci­etal val­ues. The Vril-ya’s con­sis­tent illu­mi­na­tion of their envi­ron­ment, elim­i­nat­ing the dis­tinc­tion between day and night out­doors, cou­pled with their con­trolled dim­ming of lights indoors dur­ing rest hours, show­cas­es their mas­tery over their sur­round­ings and under­lines their dis­com­fort with dark­ness. The con­cept of music as a chronome­ter with­in their soci­ety not only high­lights their cul­tur­al sophis­ti­ca­tion but also their reliance on non-tra­di­tion­al forms of mea­sur­ing time, inte­grat­ing aes­thet­ics into the func­tion­al aspect of soci­etal life.

The chap­ter delves into the Vril-ya’s per­cep­tion of time, cli­mate, and life cycle, reveal­ing an atmos­phere that allows for con­stant agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and an elon­ga­tion of life well beyond human norms, thanks to their healthy lifestyle and the med­i­c­i­nal use of vril. Their emo­tion­al and soci­etal sta­bil­i­ty, large­ly devoid of the pas­sions and ambi­tions that fuel human­i­ty’s cre­ative and destruc­tive ener­gies, con­tributes to a gen­er­al well-being and longevi­ty, set­ting a stark con­trast to the sur­face world’s tur­moil.

More­over, the nar­ra­tive explores the stag­na­tion in lit­er­a­ture and the arts with­in the Vril-ya soci­ety, sug­gest­ing that their advance­ments in social sta­bil­i­ty and con­tent­ment have led to a decline in cre­ative out­puts that thrive on con­flict, aspi­ra­tion, and emo­tion­al depth, such as poet­ry and dra­ma. Their his­tor­i­cal pro­gres­sion to a peace­ful and egal­i­tar­i­an soci­ety has ren­dered obso­lete much of the lit­er­a­ture that explores polit­i­cal, social, or pro­found­ly per­son­al themes, shift­ing focus instead to prac­ti­cal sci­ences and tech­nolo­gies. Remark­ably, this soci­etal evo­lu­tion ques­tions the val­ue and func­tion of art and lit­er­a­ture, sug­gest­ing a com­plex inter­play between soci­etal health, cre­ative expres­sion, and intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion. The nar­ra­tor’s dia­logue with his host, Aph-Lin, reveals an intrigu­ing per­spec­tive on the role of ambi­tion, inequal­i­ty, and con­flict in fos­ter­ing artis­tic and lit­er­ary growth, pos­ing fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about the nature of progress and the costs of utopia.