Arrival

Over the surface of the Earth in twelve places around the globe, suddenly appear a huge object, named people, "shells", are believed to be of extraterrestrial origin. Trying to understand the reasons and purpose of their appearance, the U.S. secret service, contact with experts, bringing among them the linguist Louise banks and astrophysics Ian Donnelly. Louise begin to pursue strange visions about her daughter, who died from a rare disease at a young age. However, it later becomes clear that Louise sees her future with Ian's daughter.

Louise and Ian with a large group of assistants working at the facility in Montana, however, have regular contact with similar groups in eleven other cities and exchanging information. Every 18 hours the entrance to the shell opens and the team of specialists penetrate the ships. The ships are inhabited and the aliens try to make contact with earthlings through a transparent wall. The aliens resemble terrestrial cephalopods, having a body with radial symmetry and tentacles family. People call them saptapadi. Giving two newcomers conditional names of Abbott and Costello (in Russian dubbing Scarecrow and the Woodman), the humans begin the study of the structure of their language.

Over time, Louise possessed a written language heptapods and begins to message them. One of their messages Louise interpretered as "suggest a gun", which greatly worried the military. Louise believes that a multivalued alien phrase can mean "suggest a gun". Fearing the hostile intentions of the aliens, a group of radical military penetrates the shell, lays the explosives and tries to undermine the ship. The explosion does not deal damage to the ship, Abbott rescues Louise and Ian and transports them back to Earth. Meanwhile, the Chinese military also intend to attack the aliens. China, Russia, and after them the rest of the country, terminated the relationship with other groups, and the data exchange stops.

During the last session, Costello explains to Louisa that they arrived in order to help people, but after three thousand years earthlings, to develop a conversation, they will help the aliens. She also learns that Abbott died after the explosion.

Gradually understand the language of the aliens, Louise realizes that they perceive time as a dimension and, therefore, perceive past, present and future as one. As it turns out, the "weapon" is the language of heptapods: studying, Louise gets the same ability to perceive time as a whole. There are visions of meeting her and Chinese General Shang in 18 months, during which the General thanked Louise for her call, which was able to unite the country. Louise says he doesn't know his numbers, but the General shows her room and says now she knows. Thus, when the decision to start armed clashes with aliens has been made, Louise from the future learns the number of General calls to China and speaks to him the words of his dead wife, which he also told her at the meeting. China cancels its decision, the countries are combined, a large-scale conflict has been averted.

After the conflict prevention shell of the aliens disappear.

A series of visions Louisa explains the problems in his personal life and partially reveals its future.

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»