Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

“Very good, my boy,” he says with a nod, still looking down at the e-reader. He doesn’t have any idea what I just said. His shelves are getting away from him. He nods and makes a quick swipe across the e-reader’s screen, then looks up. “There will be a meeting later today,” he says. “The Googlers are visiting the store”—he makes it three syllables, Goo-gull-urz—“to meet us and discuss our techniques.” He pauses. “I believe you should attend as well.”

*   *   *

So that afternoon, just after lunchtime, there is a great convening of the old guard and the new at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. The most senior of Penumbra’s students are present: white-bearded Fedorov and a woman named Muriel with short-cropped silver hair. I’ve never seen her before; she must visit during the day. Fedorov and Muriel are following their teacher. They’re going rogue.

There’s a contingent from Google, selected and sent over by Kat. They are Prakesh and Amy, both even younger than me, and Jad from the book scanner. He looks up and down the short shelves admiringly. Maybe I can sell him something later.

Neel is at a Google developer conference downtown—he wants to meet more of Kat’s colleagues and sow the seeds of an Anatomix acquisition—but he sent Igor, who is brand-new to these proceedings but seems to grasp everything instantly. Actually, he might be the smartest person in the store.

All together, young and old, we stand around the front desk with volumes from the Waybacklist opened wide for inspection. It’s a crash course on the centuries-old work of the Unbroken Spine.

“Dese are books,” Fedorov says, “not simply strings of letters.” He traces his fingers across the page. “So ve must celculate not only letter-vise, but also page-vise. Some of de most cemplicated encryption schemes rely on dis page-vise cemposition.”

The Googlers nod and take notes on their laptops. Amy has her iPad set up with a little keyboard.

The bell above the door tinkles, and a rangy man with black-rimmed glasses and a long ponytail comes hustling into the store. “Sorry I’m late,” he heaves, out of breath.

“Hello, Greg,” says Penumbra.

“Hey, Greg,” says Prakesh at the same time.

They look at each other, then across to Greg.

“Yep,” Greg says. “This is weird.”

*   *   *

It turns out that Greg—the source of Penumbra’s mystery e-reader!—is both a hardware engineer at Google and a novice in the San Francisco chapter of the Unbroken Spine. It also turns out that he is invaluable. He translates between Penumbra’s bookstore crew and the Googlers, explaining parallel processing to one group and folio sizes to the other.

Jad from the book scanner is also crucial, because he’s actually done this before. “There will be OCR errors,” he explains. “For instance, a lowercase f will come through as an s.” He types them on his laptop so we can see them side by side. “Lowercase rn looks like m. Sometimes A becomes 4, and there’s so much stuff like that. We’ll have to compensate for all those possible errors.”

Fedorov nods and interjects, “End for de optical eigenvectors of de text, as vell.”

The Googlers stare blankly at him.

“Ve must also cempensate for de optical eigenvectors,” he repeats, as if stating the obvious.

The Googlers look across to Greg. He’s staring blankly, too.

Igor raises a skinny hand and says neatly, “I tink ve could make a tree-dimensional metrix of ink-saturation values?”

Fedorov’s white beard splits into a grin.

*   *   *

I’m not sure what will happen when Google cracks MANVTIVS. Of course, there are things that I know will not happen: Penumbra’s passed-away brothers and sisters will not rise. They will not reappear. They will not even make spectral blue cameos, Jedi-style. Real life is not like The Dragon-Song Chronicles.

But it might still be big news. I mean, a secret book from the first great publisher, digitized, decoded, and made public? The New York Times might blog about that.

We decide we ought to invite the whole San Francisco fellowship down to Mountain View to watch it happen. Penumbra gives me the task of telling the members I know best.

I begin with Rosemary Lapin. I take the steep hike up to her hillside hobbit-hole and knock three times on her door. It opens just a crack, and a single wide Lapin-eye blinks out at me.

“Oh!” she squeaks, and opens the door the rest of the way. “It’s you! Did you—that is, have you—that is—what happened?”

She brings me in, opening windows and waving her hands in the air to clear away the smell of pot, and I tell her the tale over tea. Her eyes are wide, devouring; I can sense she wants to go immediately to the Reading Room and don one of those black robes. I tell her she might not have to. I tell her the Unbroken Spine’s great secret might be unlocked in just a few days.

Her face is blank. “Well, that’s something,” she says finally.

Honestly, I expected a little more excitement.