How It All Goes Down
- Now it's Tris's turn to wander around the compound.
- Tris stares at a sculpture of a big ol' rock being dripped on by water. A Chihuly it is not.
- Zoe explains that the sculpture is an overwrought metaphor for change: small drops can eventually cause big change.
- Tris, being Tris, just wants to smash the water tank and unleash the whole thing. Raar! Destruction! Tris-zilla!
- Zoe patiently explains that "then we wouldn't have any water left to do anything else" (17.18). Tris, however, is still thinking: "TRIS SMASH."
- After that conversation, Zoe takes Tris to the labs. They have something that belongs to her mom.
- Zoe calls Tris "heroic" (17.26), and Tris objects to that, sarcastically saying, "Heroism is what I was focused on. Not, you know, trying not to die" (17.27). Tris, you weren't trying that hard. We lost count of all the times you've almost willingly killed yourself.
- Zoe also talks a bit more about the experiments taking place in Indianapolis and Chicago, Tris's city.
- Anyway, Zoe and Tris meet a guy named Matthew in the lab who gives Tris a file belonging to "Natalie Wright," which was Tris's mother's name before she became known as Tris's mother.
- It seems Tris's mother's genes were "nearly perfect" (17.64), like Kate Winslet's.
- Tris's mother came from outside the city, and volunteered to be sent in to help.
- Tris wonders if her mother was assigned to marry her father.
- Matthew gives Tris a tablet with her mother's journal on it, and he asks her if she'll come in with Tobias so that he can test their genes for Divergent characteristics.
- Tris agrees, excited for Matthew to get into her genes.