For the next five years, the narrator lives in Paris. The failure of the Mars rocket causes other wealthy people to reconsider leaving the planet. Instead, they fund research until scientists discover a dandelion species that can clear the smog. When the narrator’s former employer is found guilty of murder for the rocket accident, reporters find her. She issues a public apology for working at the mountain facility and privately donates seeds and information that she stole. Former mountain residents characterize the narrator as a good cook who didn’t know about her employer’s larger plans.

The narrator opens an Italian Chinese fusion restaurant, which becomes a chain. Younger cooks, who don’t have access to good ingredients, eventually come up with more innovative dishes and outshine the narrator. Then, she becomes a restaurant investor, seeking to satiate her palate. The US border reopens, and she is able to take her cat back to California before he passes.

Ten years after the explosion, the narrator watches a documentary on the mountain community, seeing the faces of various diners. In interviews, the narrator claims that Aida wasn’t like the rest of them, but the media twists the narrator’s words so much that she stops giving interviews.