Andrew tells Gulliver about the proof

Andrew Martin (the alien narrator) tells Gulliver about the proof of the Riemann hypothesis before realizing that the disclosure has already happened. The scene turns a failed conversation into a belated confirmation: Gulliver has retained the central fact, but only as a fragment of an exchange that took place during a week of estrangement.

The attempted conversation

Gulliver begins by saying he is no good at mathematics. The narrator presses him to explain what he knows, trying to meet him in his own language, but Gulliver sits staring away, his right leg jerking rapidly. The narrator’s words seem to have no effect. He wonders whether the audio transmitter Gulliver still has in one ear might be sending radio signals, waits, and finally decides it is time to leave.

The remembered disclosure

As the narrator heads for the door, Gulliver says he was awake and that the narrator had told him something. Asked what, Gulliver recalls being told that the narrator was “the saviour of the human race or something.” The vague recollection suddenly gives the conversation a history the narrator did not know it had: he had already made the disclosure, but Gulliver’s silence had concealed its effect.

The proof as Gulliver recalls it

When the narrator asks whether he went into detail, Gulliver identifies the claim as the proof of the “Rainman hypothesis.” The narrator corrects him—Riemann, not Rainman—and asks whether he really told him that. Gulliver confirms it in the same glum tone, adding that it was the first time the narrator had spoken to him in a week. His memory preserves the extraordinary news but not its mathematical substance; the proof reaches him as an isolated claim, delivered amid a much more immediate distance between father and son.