- Lone brings the device to the farm. He finds the stuck truck and, according to Baby's instructions, hooks up the machine to the truck with silvery cables and other simple parts.
- He pulls the knob. The truck raises up as if on tiptoe. Lone pushes the knob to lower the truck and wishes he knew how to drive.
- He looks for Mr. Prodd. He finds a note and takes it and wishes he knew how to read.
- Lone leaves, never to return. The truck sits in the sun, rusting but connected to the device with its strange silver cables.
- The device is revealed to be Earth's first anti-gravity generator, capable of powering interplanetary travel. Wish we had one of those!
- The novel emphasizes that the anti-gravity device was created by an "idiot" and left behind, forgotten.
- Janie reads Lone the note from Mr. Prodd. It describes how he thinks Mrs. Prodd is in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The note says he's going to look for Mrs. Prodd, even though he can't free the truck. The note invites Lone to borrow anything and calls him a good boy and a good friend.
- Lone asks Janie to reread the letter four times in a three-week period, learning something new each time.
- He first believes the loss of Mr. Prodd means the loss of everything directed, cooperative, and in any way representative of advanced life or evolution.
- Lone then asks Baby (via Janie and the twins) to define what a friend is.
- Baby defines a friend as "somebody who goes on loving you whether he likes you or not."
- Lone thinks the Prodds couldn't have been friends because they were ready to throw him out whenever Jack came. He wonders if friends loved him forever.
- He asks Baby if you can be truly part of someone you love. This is getting deep.
- Baby responds you can only truly be part of someone you love if you love yourself.
- Lone remembers merging with Evelyn. He thinks if he can understand that, he can understand everything, because it was a time where there was a perfect flow with another, no language in the way causing misunderstood ideas.
- He wonders, if he is an idiot, what Evelyn was. He wonders what you'd call a person older than babies who can communicate through calls the way babies can communicate through murmurs. He asks Baby this (via Janie). Baby answers, "An innocent." Aw.
- Lone decides an innocent is the most beautiful thing possible. He wonders why and decides an innocent's waiting for the end of innocence is what is beautiful. He and Evelyn ended their innocence and idiocy in exchange for a merging.
- This realization makes Lone glad, because he understands he made something with Evelyn. It was worth it. He decides the pain of losing the Prodds, to whom he never truly belonged, wasn't.
- Lone suddenly wonders wildly why he keeps trying to figure out who he is and to whom he belongs. He wonders if his wondering is the result of being an outcast.
- Lone tells Janie to ask Baby what kind of people are always trying to figure those things out.
- Baby, via Janie, answers, "Every kind." Mega-deep.
- Lone asks what kind he is. When Baby pauses for a minute, Lone yells out the question.
- Janie explains Baby doesn't quite have a way to say it, but basically he, Baby, is a figure-outer brain, she is the body, the twins are arms and legs, and Lone is the head. Baby says that the "I" is all five of them together.
- Lone repeats and repeats that he finally belongs, his heart about to burst. He looks at the group, deciding they're just now born and can grow. Baby denies this, saying the head, Lone, is too stupid for the group to grow. Ouch! Part 1 concludes saying Lone has come to know himself, but at this pinnacle he has found the rugged base of a mountain.