103 pages • 3 hours read
Rodman PhilbrickThe Last Book In The Universe
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 25-27Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 25 Summary: “Thinking About the Future”
Bean is taken to the Primary Laboratory after Lanaya’s parents get permission from the Authority. So far, she is not getting worse or better. Because proovs are genetically enhanced, they no longer need doctors, just “med-teks,” or medical technicians, who fix proovs after they’ve been involved in an accident. They begin to search for data related to her specific illness, while the others take a look around the Prime. Most of the lab is underground because that’s where the proovs first went after the Big Shake to hide from the poisonous air from the volcanic eruptions kicked off by the massive earthquake. For a while, the average lifespan fell to around 20 years before genetic engineering. Holographic images in the oldest part of the Prime show the original team wearing gas masks, barring a small baby who doesn’t need one. One of the first improvements, which is still in place, according to Lanaya, was the ability to tolerate elevated levels of toxic gases. Ryter asks if the original baby is still alive, hoping to hear that the proovs have unlocked the secret to eternal life; he is disappointed to hear that their average life expectancy is around 100 years. The baby, if alive, would have been over 200 years old.
Spaz pays a visit to Bean, where he talks to Jin about helping Bean and why Lanaya is so important to Eden. She was designed for the job, given leadership qualities before birth as well as the ability to plan for the future. Spaz tells Jin what he knows and guesses about the probes, all about Mongo, and how the probes are suspected to be made in Eden and smuggled into the Urb for the express reason to wipe out the normals and the whole system outside of Eden. Jin, appalled, resolves to go to the Authority to find out the truth about the probes.
Later, the Authority reports that the cybers no longer have any data on the old cures, which had to do with radiation and chemotherapy. They may be able to administer Bean with some improved genes that control replacement of blood cells. There’s a chance it will work, but if not, Bean will die.
Chapter 26 Summary: “The Bean Is Back”
They inject Bean with the improved genes and three days later she is lucid. Spaz sees her wake up, and they are all excited, including the med-teks who didn't know whether gene therapy would work. Bean thinks Eden is a dream she is having, but Spaz convinces her they are actually there. He feels bad for getting upset with Lanaya and her family because without them, Bean would have died. Ryter is over the moon, congratulating Spaz on having saved his “fair maiden” (164) and saying that now his book can have a happy ending. He says it was always Spaz’s journey, and he had “the courage to imagine it first” (164).
They need to leave the Prime before too many people find out there are normals in Eden, so the next day they move Bean back to Lanaya’s home, where Bean finds amazement in all that Eden has to offer. Bean can understand the complex logic and mechanisms as Lanaya explains them to her, unlike Spaz. Bean has a dream to change the Urb into a place more like Eden. She is afraid Lanaya will send them all back once she is better, but Lanaya seems to have other plans.
Chapter 27 Summary: “What the Boy Said”
On the seventh day in Eden, Bean learns chess and Little Face begins to speak. Lanaya and Jin love to play chess, and Jin is one of the best players in Eden. While the normals are watching them play in the game space, Bean asks if she can play. Bean plays against Jin, at Spaz’s request, while he and Lanaya watch, and Bean wins. Lanaya asks Jin to contemplate what it might mean in a larger sense if a 12-year-old girl from the Urb might be able to beat him at his own game. Bean and Jin play for hours and now that he’s taking her seriously their games always end in a “standoff” (169).
Bree and Little Face spend most of their time together in mutual enjoyment; Bree announces she will be adopting Little Face, and when Jin questions the reality of the situation, Little Face begins to speak: “I love Bree and Bree loves me” (173). Lanaya acknowledges that because of her genetic code, she was probably not the neediest of children and so Bree enjoys feeling that way.
Chapters 25-27 Analysis
In Chapter 25, Ryter tells Jin the theory that probes have all been generated in Eden and sent out into the Urb to wipe out the normals and decentralize their society, to the benefit of Eden, as a purification of some kind: “‘Are there proovs who would like to see the Urb and all the people in it disappear?’Jin grimaces uncomfortably. ‘I suppose there are.’ ‘Well, if someone wanted to wipe us out, or encourage us to self-destruct, rotting our minds would be a good place to start’” (159). Similar theories have been developed to explain the proliferation of illegal drugs in the United States, despite politicians’ promises to eradicate them or wage war against them.
The Ryter’s ideas about probes are representative of theories of corruption in politics, but they also demonstrate the book’s overarching theme of memory and its importance for maintaining a cohesive society and a sense of collective living: “Take away memory—the sense of who we are—and human beings revert to animal behavior, […] [a]nd animals are easier to exterminate than humans” (159).Spaz confirms the proliferation of memory loss due to probing in the Urb: “Thinking about the future may be great for proovs, […] [b]ut normals don’t even have a past, let alone a future" (158).
Bean’s intelligence is finally showcased in Chapters 26 and 27, first when Lanaya is able to explain complex mathematical concepts to her, and then when she beats Jin at chess. Lanaya asks her father to consider what it might mean if a normal child can learn as quickly as Bean; he can’t deny her existence or what she’s capable of and is forced to take some time to think on it. Jin appears to have an open mind, and Lanaya encourages him to use it. It is clear, however, that Bean presents a challenge to his conventions of what is possible for proovs due to genetic improvements over the past two centuries, and some stereotypes he’s harboring about normals from the Urb.
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