The Overstory

by

Richard Powers

A child of Indian immigrants, Neelay is a coding genius who creates a series of world-building computer games called Mastery. Neelay grows up in the Silicon Valley and quickly becomes fascinated with computers and coding through his father, Babul, who works at an early computing company. As a child, Neelay falls from a tree and breaks his back, becoming paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. A prodigy at coding, Neelay is accepted two years early to Stanford and soon starts building games and releasing them for free. He then has a life-changing experience at the Stanford wild terrarium, receiving a bolt of inspiration from the trees around him and seeing a vision of the kind of game he is destined to build. He drops out of school to focus on coding full-time, and soon develops his game that will change the world: Mastery. Neelay works constantly, living in his electric wheelchair and often forgetting to eat or sleep, and as he produces successive Mastery games, his personal company Sempervirens (named after the redwood’s Latin name) becomes fabulously wealthy and successful. Extremely tall and thin and with long, flowing hair, Neelay appears to others like a saint or ascetic genius. He longs for physical companionship but thinks that other people find his appearance disgusting. After becoming discontented with Mastery, Neelay is again inspired (this time by Patricia’s book The Secret Forest) to make a new kind of game that reflects the natural world of Earth itself. In preparation for this, he creates AI bots to learn for him and gather information about the way forests work. Though Neelay is relatively disconnected from The Overstory’s other characters—he only ever meets Patricia at her final speech, and reads her book—his character offers an example of how technology can help repair humanity’s relationship to the natural world. At the same time, the games and bots he creates take on a life of their own, showing that humans are just one aspect of life itself, which is constantly growing and evolving even beyond the human.

Neelay Mehta Quotes in The Overstory

The The Overstory quotes below are all either spoken by Neelay Mehta or refer to Neelay Mehta. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Humans and Trees Theme Icon
).
Part 1: Roots—Neelay Mehta Quotes

There's a story he's waiting for, long before he comes across it. When he finds it at last, it stays with him forever, although he’ll never be able to find it again, in any database. Aliens land on Earth. They're little runts, as alien races go. But they metabolize like there's no tomorrow. They zip around like swarms of gnats, too fast to see—so fast that Earth seconds seem to them like years. To them, humans are nothing but sculptures of immobile meat. The foreigners try to communicate, but there's no reply. Finding no signs of intelligent life, they tuck into the frozen statues and start curing them like so much jerky, for the long ride home.

Related Characters: Neelay Mehta
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: Roots—Patricia Westerford Quotes

These people are nothing to Plant-Patty. And yet their lives have long been connected, deep underground. Their kinship will work like an unfolding book. The past always comes clearer, in the future.

Years from now, she’ll write a book of her own, The Secret Forest. Its opening page will read:

You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes….

Related Characters: Dr. Patricia “Patty” Westerford (speaker), Nicholas Hoel/Watchman, Mimi Ma/Mulberry, Adam Appich/Maple, Douglas “Douggie” Pavlicek/Doug-fir, Neelay Mehta, Dorothy Cazaly Brinkman, Ray Brinkman
Page Number: 132
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: Trunk Quotes

He looks up at the peaked roof of the construction office and thinks, What the hell am I doing? The clarity of recent weeks, the sudden waking from sleepwalk, his certainty that the world has been stolen and the atmosphere trashed for the shortest of short-term gains, the sense that he must do all he can to fight for the living world's most wondrous creatures: all these abandon Adam, and he's left in the insanity of denying the bedrock of human existence. Property and mastery: nothing else counts. Earth will be monetized until all trees grow in straight lines, three people own all seven continents, and every large organism is bred to be slaughtered.

Related Characters: Adam Appich/Maple, Neelay Mehta
Related Symbols: Mastery
Page Number: 347-348
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3: Crown Quotes

“A forest knows things. They wire themselves up underground. There are brains down there, ones our own brains aren't shaped to see. Root plasticity, solving problems and making decisions. Fungal synapses. What else do you want to call it? Link enough trees together, and a forest grows aware.”

Her words sound far away, cork-lined and underwater. Either both her hearing aids have died at once or her childhood deafness has chosen this moment to come back.

“We scientists are taught never to look for ourselves in other species. So we make sure nothing looks like us! Until a short while ago, we didn't even let chimpanzees have consciousness, let alone dogs or dolphins. Only man, you see: only man could know enough to want things. But believe me: trees want something from us, just as we've always wanted things from them. This isn't mystical. The ‘environment’ is alive—a fluid, changing web of purposeful lives dependent on each other.”

Related Characters: Dr. Patricia “Patty” Westerford (speaker), Mimi Ma/Mulberry, Neelay Mehta
Page Number: 453-454
Explanation and Analysis:

The single best thing you can do for the world. It occurs to her: The problem begins with that word world. It means two such opposite things. The real one we cannot see. The invented one we can't escape. She lifts the glass and hears her father read out loud: Let me sing to you now, about how people turn into other things.

Neelay’s shouts come too late to break the room's spell. The speaker raises her glass, and the world splits. Down one branch, she lifts the glass to her lips, toasts the room—To Tachigali versicolor—and drinks. Down another branch, this one, she shouts, "Here's to unsuicide," and flings the cup of swirling green over the gasping audience. She bumps the podium, backs away, and stumbles into the wings, leaving the room to stare at an empty stage.

Related Characters: Dr. Patricia “Patty” Westerford (speaker), Olivia Vandergriff/Maidenhair, Neelay Mehta, Dennis Ward
Page Number: 466
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4: Seeds Quotes

The words Neelay writes add to a growing organism, one that has just now begun to add to itself. At other screens in other cities, all the best coders that several hundred million dollars can hire contribute to the work in progress. Their brand-new venture into cooperation is off to the most remarkable beginning. Already their creatures swallow up whole continents of data, finding in them the most surprising patterns. Nothing needs to start from scratch. There's so much digital germplasm already in the public domain.

The coders tell the listeners nothing except how to look. Then the new creations head off to scout the globe, and the code spreads outward. New theories, new offspring, and more evolving species, all of them sharing a single goal: to find out how big life is, how connected, and what it would take for people to unsuicide. The Earth has become again the deepest, finest game, and the learners just its latest players.

Related Characters: Dr. Patricia “Patty” Westerford, Neelay Mehta
Related Symbols: Mastery
Page Number: 482
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Overstory LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Overstory PDF

Neelay Mehta Quotes in The Overstory

The The Overstory quotes below are all either spoken by Neelay Mehta or refer to Neelay Mehta. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Humans and Trees Theme Icon
).
Part 1: Roots—Neelay Mehta Quotes

There's a story he's waiting for, long before he comes across it. When he finds it at last, it stays with him forever, although he’ll never be able to find it again, in any database. Aliens land on Earth. They're little runts, as alien races go. But they metabolize like there's no tomorrow. They zip around like swarms of gnats, too fast to see—so fast that Earth seconds seem to them like years. To them, humans are nothing but sculptures of immobile meat. The foreigners try to communicate, but there's no reply. Finding no signs of intelligent life, they tuck into the frozen statues and start curing them like so much jerky, for the long ride home.

Related Characters: Neelay Mehta
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: Roots—Patricia Westerford Quotes

These people are nothing to Plant-Patty. And yet their lives have long been connected, deep underground. Their kinship will work like an unfolding book. The past always comes clearer, in the future.

Years from now, she’ll write a book of her own, The Secret Forest. Its opening page will read:

You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes….

Related Characters: Dr. Patricia “Patty” Westerford (speaker), Nicholas Hoel/Watchman, Mimi Ma/Mulberry, Adam Appich/Maple, Douglas “Douggie” Pavlicek/Doug-fir, Neelay Mehta, Dorothy Cazaly Brinkman, Ray Brinkman
Page Number: 132
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: Trunk Quotes

He looks up at the peaked roof of the construction office and thinks, What the hell am I doing? The clarity of recent weeks, the sudden waking from sleepwalk, his certainty that the world has been stolen and the atmosphere trashed for the shortest of short-term gains, the sense that he must do all he can to fight for the living world's most wondrous creatures: all these abandon Adam, and he's left in the insanity of denying the bedrock of human existence. Property and mastery: nothing else counts. Earth will be monetized until all trees grow in straight lines, three people own all seven continents, and every large organism is bred to be slaughtered.

Related Characters: Adam Appich/Maple, Neelay Mehta
Related Symbols: Mastery
Page Number: 347-348
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3: Crown Quotes

“A forest knows things. They wire themselves up underground. There are brains down there, ones our own brains aren't shaped to see. Root plasticity, solving problems and making decisions. Fungal synapses. What else do you want to call it? Link enough trees together, and a forest grows aware.”

Her words sound far away, cork-lined and underwater. Either both her hearing aids have died at once or her childhood deafness has chosen this moment to come back.

“We scientists are taught never to look for ourselves in other species. So we make sure nothing looks like us! Until a short while ago, we didn't even let chimpanzees have consciousness, let alone dogs or dolphins. Only man, you see: only man could know enough to want things. But believe me: trees want something from us, just as we've always wanted things from them. This isn't mystical. The ‘environment’ is alive—a fluid, changing web of purposeful lives dependent on each other.”

Related Characters: Dr. Patricia “Patty” Westerford (speaker), Mimi Ma/Mulberry, Neelay Mehta
Page Number: 453-454
Explanation and Analysis:

The single best thing you can do for the world. It occurs to her: The problem begins with that word world. It means two such opposite things. The real one we cannot see. The invented one we can't escape. She lifts the glass and hears her father read out loud: Let me sing to you now, about how people turn into other things.

Neelay’s shouts come too late to break the room's spell. The speaker raises her glass, and the world splits. Down one branch, she lifts the glass to her lips, toasts the room—To Tachigali versicolor—and drinks. Down another branch, this one, she shouts, "Here's to unsuicide," and flings the cup of swirling green over the gasping audience. She bumps the podium, backs away, and stumbles into the wings, leaving the room to stare at an empty stage.

Related Characters: Dr. Patricia “Patty” Westerford (speaker), Olivia Vandergriff/Maidenhair, Neelay Mehta, Dennis Ward
Page Number: 466
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4: Seeds Quotes

The words Neelay writes add to a growing organism, one that has just now begun to add to itself. At other screens in other cities, all the best coders that several hundred million dollars can hire contribute to the work in progress. Their brand-new venture into cooperation is off to the most remarkable beginning. Already their creatures swallow up whole continents of data, finding in them the most surprising patterns. Nothing needs to start from scratch. There's so much digital germplasm already in the public domain.

The coders tell the listeners nothing except how to look. Then the new creations head off to scout the globe, and the code spreads outward. New theories, new offspring, and more evolving species, all of them sharing a single goal: to find out how big life is, how connected, and what it would take for people to unsuicide. The Earth has become again the deepest, finest game, and the learners just its latest players.

Related Characters: Dr. Patricia “Patty” Westerford, Neelay Mehta
Related Symbols: Mastery
Page Number: 482
Explanation and Analysis: