Lawrence Waterhouse tracks down a computer of his own in the ruins of Manila, a Mr. Gu, whose small import/export business was destroyed by the war (it is hard to run such a business when you are on an island, and every ship that leaves or approaches the island gets sunk by Americans). Waterhouse shows Mr. Gu photos of the abaci as they were left by the dead computers. Mr. Gu tells him what numbers are encoded in those bead positions, as well as giving Waterhouse a couple of days’ tutorial on basic abacus technique. The important thing learned from this is not really abacus skills but rather the remarkable speed and precision with which a computer like Mr. Gu can churn out calculations.