Guardians of the Past, Handmaidens of the Future
- Let's put a hold on Robert Gu and check out some other old people. We're not being too insulting: they call themselves "the Elder Cabal." They're meeting on the sixth floor of the library.
- The Elder Cabal now consists of Winston Blount, ex-dean; Tom Parker, computer whiz (who sticks to his beloved laptop); and Carlos Rivera, young librarian (and disabled veteran).
- They watch the protest, which they support. The Elder Cabal, unsurprisingly, wants to keep the old-style books.
- And they notice that Robert Gu has wandered accidentally into the book-shredding area. Because that's what the Librareome Project is: it's about digitizing all the books in the library (cool!) by ripping them into little shreds (uncool!).
- (Also, the Librareome Project is a project by a guy named Max Huertas, who is a major investor in the biotech labs.)
- Here's what Robert Gu sees: empty shelves, something like a tree shredder, and floating book scraps that have escaped the vacuum/camera thing.
- Luckily for the books, the fact that Robert showed up in the library interferes with the day's digitization/shredding.
- But that doesn't mean that Winston Blount is happy to see Gu again when Carlos Rivera comes to bring Gu upstairs. As Robert remembers, Winnie and he used to fight all the time when they both worked at UCSD.
- The Elder Cabal explains to Robert (and us) what's going on with the Librareome Project. (Although let's note that Carlos Rivera sometimes accidentally slips into Mandarin Chinese because he was an army translator. Which isn't actually a good explanation.)
- Zulfikar Sharif comes back after disappearing for a while and explains that he was hijacked. Oh, we've heard that excuse before. And they all argue about whether the Librareome is a good idea or not. (They also explain how the shredded material—the shredda—gets recaptured as pictures to be reassembled by programs. Also, Huertas's company is doing this to many libraries.)
- And Zulfi Sharif is also at the library now to meet them in person.