Sea of Tranquility

Part 3 is not broken up into chapters, but there are sections separated by asterisks. Before the first set of asterisks, Olive’s book tour begins in New York City. She walks in Central Park between events and is then herded by Aretta, one of her regional publicists, to a dinner. Olive, who was born and raised on a moon colony, wonders about living on Earth.

She meets up with her parents, who retired to a small town near Denver, the next day. They talk about imposter syndrome and Olive being away from Dion and Sylvie while on tour. Olive travels through Colorado Springs, Salt Lake City, and Texas. There, a woman suggests Olive’s book, Marienbad, ends too abruptly, and Olive contemplates this as she travels to Canada. There, over the phone, Dion tells Olive he is on a new project at a university center for physics that is connected to a government building by underground tunnels.

After the first asterisks, Olive has a driver who explains her idea for a book, a sci-fi/fantasy epic. The driver also mentions the connection between the pandemic in Olive’s book and a new virus in Australia. An excerpt from Olive’s lecture is included. She talks about Captain George Vancouver discovering villages ravaged by smallpox in 1792 while worrying about the new virus spreading to New Zealand.

After the next asterisks, more of Olive’s lecture is excerpted. She discusses traders in 1791 also finding evidence of smallpox. Between events, a driver asks why she is on tour when she has a five-year-old daughter; he shares that he’s never been to the moon colonies. At other events, the lecture excerpts pick up with Olive discussing how Romans contracted the Antonine Plague and believed it was due to opening a hole in a temple of Apollo in Seleucia. She also talks to Dion on the phone about the new virus; he wishes she were home.

A librarian in Cincinnati also talks to Olive about the virus and how the library has a “ten-thousand-year lease on the space” (82) created by overly optimistic 19th-century people. In Paris, Olive speaks about the randomness of illness being frightening. Aretta is visiting Paris and says hello after the lecture. Another woman comments on Dion’s kindness in watching Sylvie, which offends Olive.

In Tallinn, Olive tells an interviewer that it feels surreal to be on the book tour, and a driver sings beautifully while taking her to her hotel. She talks to Dion on the phone, but he must take a work call before she can tell him that she thinks his project might be related to time travel, due to the government security building connection. In Lyon, an interviewer asks questions about mystery tropes and sex, which make Olive uncomfortable, and she leaves. In Shanghai, Olive is overcome with exhaustion, and repeats “It’s too much” (88), which causes her room’s AI system to ask if she needs help.

After the next asterisks, Olive tells a hologram of an interviewer in Tokyo that her book does not have a specific message. He keeps having to mute himself to cough. A woman asks if the signature in her book is in Olive’s handwriting, but it is not. The idea of someone else impersonating her haunts Olive for a few days.

After another set of asterisks, Olive is in Cape Town. She meets an author and his husband who are enjoying the long book tour. They tell her that the Far Colonies construction just began, and Olive is overjoyed to hear it.

The next stop on Olive’s book tour is Buenos Aires. There, a woman shows Olive her tattoo, a fictional tattoo in Olive’s book. Olive is amazed, having only seen five tattoos imitating one that her character Gaspery-Jacques has in Marienbad.

After more asterisks, Olive arrives in the Dakota Republic. She gets an invitation for a festival on Titan but wants to go home. In an interview, she says her first novel’s title, Swimming Stars with Goldflitter, came from an AI’s description for candles.

In the city-state of Los Angeles, Olive is interviewed with another writer named Jessica Marley. Olive did not like Jessica’s book about growing up on a moon colony because it did not resemble her experience of growing up there, and Jessica is combative in the interview. An audience member believes the death of the prophet in her book is not climactic, and Olive doubts her work again.

In Copenhagen, a poet mentions that it’s only bad chickens that come home to roost. An audience member has a coughing fit from this joke and must leave. She thinks about how the world continues when someone dies, in the context of the potentially anticlimactic death in her novel.

Back in the Atlantic Republic, Olive meets up with Aretta again and admits that the amount of people at her book tour events has been a bit overwhelming. She also privately misses Dion and Sylvie.

The book tour’s last stop is in Philadelphia. She has an interview with Gaspery, and they discuss his name appearing in her book. Olive believed she made up the name, as did Gaspery’s mother. Gaspery asks about a scene in her book that resembles Vincent’s film and Edwin’s experience: a character hearing a violin and being transported somewhere. She says it didn’t come from personal experience. When he asks her about the Oklahoma City Airship Terminal, she asks to go off the record.