Bruno and Alison, who made her PhD under the supervision of Yuen Fu-ting at Fu-tan university in China, discuss about arithmetics and the relation of mathematical truth to the physical world.
They discuss about the aliens responsible and the possibility, that if their attack indeed only spread with the speed of light, they must exist on Earth in a form invisible to them due to their different mathematics.
Burnham indicated that "Luminous" and "Dark Integers" "aren't necessarily Egan's best stories" as they "both rely heavily on their plots, with very little characterization", and "it's very hard to find a narrative toehold when the infodumping gets confusing".
She explained, "Then I knew that my feeling of disjointedness wasn't because I was stupid, but because the stories' conceit really was completely without basis in any real-world science or genre convention.
"[6] In the Reactor Magazine, Salik Shah claimed the short story (together with its sequel "Dark Integers") "would make an exciting premise for radio or film adaptation.