Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

On his return to New York, Clay feels restless and begins to re-read The Dragon Song Chronicles, now knowing that Clark Moffat was a member of the Unbroken Spine. He reaches a part of the second volume where the heroes of the story are about to use a magical artifact, the Golden Horn of Griffo, when he wonders if this is a reference to Griffo Gerritszoon. Clay starts to take notes about how the horn is described in Moffat’s book: it is “finely wrought” (199) but “the magic is in the making alone” (199); “Griffo made an instrument so perfect even the dead must rise to hear its call. He made it with his hands, without spell or dragon-songs” (199). Clay senses the significance of this passage of the book but can’t decide what it means. Later, he meets Kat who is on a high after her first PM meeting and eager to tell Clay all about it. She also reveals that she told the PM about Manutius’s book and the plan to decode it and that she has secured the PM’s support for the project, which will start in two weeks’ time. 

Penumbra agrees to keep the store open until the money in the bank runs out and Clay returns to work. He has plans to turn the store into a real business and his new ad campaign shows good early results, but Penumbra doesn’t seem interested, as he is too preoccupied with the possibility of decoding Manutius’s book. He does invite Clay to attend a meeting of some members of the fellowship and the “Googlers” later that day. One man, Greg, turns out to be both a hardware engineer for Google and a novice of the Unbroken Spine. Penumbra decides to invite the whole San Francisco fellowship to watch the decoding process on the Google campus and asks Clay to personally invite Lapin and Tyndall. In the two weeks before the decoding begins, Clay and Kat see very little of each other; Kat is busy with the PM and has stopped wearing her characteristic red t-shirt. 

The night before the decoding begins, Clay is looking up Moffat in the logbook when Mat walks into the shop with Neel and a lot of photography equipment. They plan to photo-document the store so that it can be recreated, although they disagree about whether to make a digital or a physical model. While they are arguing, the phone in Penumbra’s office rings and Clay answers it: it’s Corvina. He knows that they have made a copy of Manutius’s book and that they intend to try and decode it. He urges Clay to stop Penumbra, arguing that this disappointment will be the greatest of all and that it will destroy Penumbra. Clay is initially swayed by Corvina’s argument; he doesn’t want to hurt Penumbra. Ultimately, however, Clay realizes that “If Corvina’s right, it means nobody should try anything new or risky” (219) and he decides to help the plan go ahead. Leaving the store that morning for what may be the final time, Clay is overcome by sadness, and knows that while “Neel’s model might match the store’s volume” (220), it would never match “its density” (220). 

It is the day that Clay and his friends are going to try and decode Manutius’s book. The project is set up in an outdoor amphitheater on the Google campus and Clay describes Kat as a general, with the coders as her troops. Penumbra and his students are also in attendance. Kat tells them that they have two hundred machines at their disposal and when she gives the order to start work, the “screens leap to life, a blitzkrieg of data visualization and exploration” (225). Yet, they are making little progress and Kat informs them they have been given use of another eight hundred machines. Then, Kat tells them that they are being given use of the whole system, with the result that, “on a sunny Friday morning, for three seconds, you can’t search for anything. You can’t check your email. You can’t watch any videos. You can’t get directions. For just three seconds, nothing works, because every single one of Google’s computers around the world is dedicated to this task” (228). Despite all of their efforts and resources, they fail to break the code and in the midst of all of the disappointment, Penumbra quietly leaves and Clay is left to ponder Corvina’s earlier warning.