Rainbows End Chapter 34 Summary

The British Museum and the British Library

  • After the demo, Robert runs into Winston Blount. Now, although Winnie and Robert used to fight all the time, Winston congratulates Robert and Juan on their piece. Robert even admits that the poetry part was mostly Juan.
  • Robert also thanks Louise Chumlig, who admits that she kind of knew his issue all along.
  • Robert and Juan also run into Xiu Xiang and Tommie Parker, who apparently are a couple now. (Aww—the hacker and the engineer.) Tommie notes that in the old days, work like Robert's synchronization algorithm would be patentable.
  • Xiu notes that Tommie is old and afraid to try new things, like wearable computing. Which is true. But it also seems like a very psychiatrist thing to say.
  • Tommie also explains that they stopped Huertas and gave other companies a chance to catch up. The Chinese actually digitized the British Museum and British Library in "semi-nondestructive" ways.
  • In fact, Tommie gives Robert a small disk that holds all of the information from the British Museum and Library.
  • Back at Rainbows End, Xiu and Lena catch up. Lena reports on some small therapy help she's trying to provide in the background now.
  • While Xiu respects Lena's psychiatric perceptions of most people, she tells her that she's wrong about Robert: he's not the colossal jerk he used to be.
  • But Lena refuses to listen and goes to her room.