The Overstory: Part 1: Roots—Neelay Mehta Summary & Analysis

Described as “the boy who’ll help change humans into other creatures,” Neelay Mehta is a seven-year-old boy watching TV in his family’s San Jose apartment. Neelay’s mother Ritu (whom he calls Moti) is from the Rajasthan state in India, while his father Babul (whom he calls Pita) is from Gujarat. Ritu is cooking in the kitchen when Babul climbs the stairs to the apartment, carrying a large box. Babul came to America eight years before, has a degree in solid-state physics, and is now working for a company developing computers.

Neelay is very excited about the box his father is carrying, and Babul reveals that it is a present for both of them: a computer kit. When he opens the box, the boy is disappointed by its appearance, but Babul explains that someday this device will come to life and do whatever they want. He himself helped design the microprocessor. Neelay is skeptical that such a small thing could hold so much potential, and in response Babul shows him a photo of an enormous banyan tree that has taken over a temple. The boy is horrified by the “vegetable probing” of the countless trunks and branches, but he also can’t look away. Babul tells him that if such a tree could come from a tiny seed the size of Neelay’s fingertip, then they, too, can fit anything into their new machine.

Over the next days and weeks, Babul and Neelay build the computer and teach it a few simple commands. Months pass, and they increase its memory. Neelay becomes obsessed with working on the machine, “branching” himself into new worlds. The narrator notes that Neelay will continue this work for his whole life, reincarnating himself endlessly and furthering the new processes that are quickly rewiring the human brain. The narrator then describes the many different ways that trees branch and spread and compares this endless growth to the code expanding beneath Neelay’s fingertips.

As the computing business grows, the Mehta family becomes wealthier and moves to a new neighborhood. Babul fills the garage with a constant wave of new tehnology and gear. Meanwhile, Neelay attends school and lives like a normal child, but he is not concerned with normal childhood things—instead, he dreams only of coding and data. He recognizes something important as well: that “people are in for it,” and soon they will be “upgraded.”

Neelay also loves to read, especially fantasy and science fiction books. One story that will stick with him forever, though he forgets its name, is about tiny aliens who come to Earth. The aliens move so quickly that humans can’t even see them, and Earth seconds seem like years to them. In the aliens’ perception, humans are just “sculptures of immobile meat.” Assuming that they aren’t truly alive or intelligent, the aliens take humans for food for their journey home.

Neelay is still extremely close to his father, and he and Babul delight in their new discoveries and inventions. When Neelay is 11, he plans to make his Pita a kite: not a real one, but a digital one that can be interacted and played with on the computer. He fills a notebook with diagrams and ideas, and he tries to keep it a secret from his father. One day in his literature class, however, Neelay accidentally exclaims out loud when he solves a particular problem in the kite program. The class laughs, and his teacher, Ms. Gilpin, calls Neelay up to the front with his notebook. He tries to explain that it’s just “computer stuff,” but Ms. Gilpin takes the notebook, clearly disappointed that Neelay would rather work on this than read literature.

Neelay goes to Ms. Gilpin’s office at the end of the day and asks about his notebook. She condescendingly asks if he was really “working” in it at all, and Neelay feels like she wants some kind of confession or gratitude from him. Suddenly angry, he asks for his “damn notebook” back. Ms. Gilpin is shocked that he would swear at her, and she promises to tell his parents. She demands that he come to her room first thing the next morning to discuss his punishment.

Neelay skips the bus and walks home, panicked about what will happen when his parents find out that he swore at a teacher. He knows that word will spread throughout their entire community and “his mother will die of disgrace.” Neelay goes to a nearby park and walks among the trees. One low branch seems to beckon him, and he starts to climb. From high in the tree, he thinks about how his life is ruined, how all his family in India will find out, and how Babul will be crushed that Neelay talked back to a white person in a position of authority.

Neelay then has the idea to let himself get “dusted up a little bit” falling out of the tree, so as to win some sympathy from his parents. Instead, he accidentally slips and falls from his high perch. He lands on his back on the park’s concrete path, cracking the base of his spine. Neelay looks up in a daze at the million green branches of the oak tree, seeing it as a perfect piece of self-writing code. Then, he passes out.

Neelay wakes up in the hospital, several days later. His arms and legs are restrained in tubes. His mother, Ritu, notices that his eyes have opened, and she starts sobbing. High on painkillers, Neelay drifts through various visions and feels a terrible itching everywhere above his waist. When he becomes coherent, he asks why he’s being restrained. No one tells him yet, but over the following days people come to visit him, everyone trying their best to look comforting. Neelay, meanwhile, feels that he is just fine—only his body, his “avatar,” has been injured. He asks again to remove the tubes, and at last understands that he is now paralyzed from the waist down.

Neelay quickly accepts his paralysis, as he is only concerned with his computing work, but his parents despair and will take years to fully accept his state. A few days after Neelay’s realization, Ms. Gilpin visits him in the hospital. She tries to apologize and soon breaks down crying, though Neelay acts like his normal self. Ms. Gilpin tearfully returns his notebook, and when Neelay sees it, he immediately forgets about her and his injury—he’s just excited to have his work back.

Six years pass, and Neelay is now six-foot-six, extremely skinny, and has long flowing hair. Maneuvering about in a wheelchair, he spends his days coding, barely eating or drinking. He goes to Stanford two years early, where he finds a community of other coders. On Sunday nights, they get together and discuss the potential of their work. They feel that they are part of the next era of human evolution, entering completely uncharted territory. Neelay claims one night that in the future, machines will be living and self-learning. The other students laugh, but Neelay is serious.

Neelay soon starts building games and giving them away for free over the internet, and his name becomes well-known in online circles. Eventually other developers start forming companies and charging money, however, and the online gift economy shrinks. For at least a year Neelay resists this, playing a “Robin Hood” on the internet by recreating commercial games and offering them for free.

Neelay’s latest game is a role-playing space opera, and he goes to the Stanford library to find ideas for “surreal bestiaries” to build up his world. Taking a break at dusk, he rolls his wheelchair across campus to fuel up on snacks. After almost crashing into an elderly woman, he suddenly looks up to see an otherworldly tree—it looks like it’s from outer space, and it is the inspiration he needs. Looking around, Neelay sees more fantastical trees of every variety. He feels like he’s on drugs or transported to another planet. He rolls from tree to tree, touching and smelling them.

The other tourists leave the wild terrarium and Neelay is left totally alone. Suddenly, he receives what seems to be a direct thought from the trees around him: a vision of a game that creates a whole new world, populated by its own plants and animals and visited by millions of players around the world. The goal of the game is simply to explore and build this endlessly rich, complex world. The vision ends, and Neelay starts to plan how to bring his idea to fruition. He will need to drop out of school and work on development full-time, sell the space-opera game for real money, and then start work on his life’s new goal. Neelay rolls away from the terrarium, as all around him trees work out their own slow, secret plans.