On page 218, Tom is showing Randy some old Japanese air-raid shelter in a cave in Manila and they have the following conversation.
Randy sits down on the floor and grabs his ankles. He's staring open-mouthed at the books in the chest.
"You okay?" Tom asks.
"Heavy, heavy deja vu," Randy says.
"From this?"
"Yeah," Randy says, "I've seen this before."
"Where?"
"In my grandmother's attic."
I guess I was confused as to whether his relating the pile of books to his grandmother is a general statement, in the way that old people tend to have piles of useless stuff lying around or whether there was another meaning that I didn't get. I was wondering if it was supposed to conenct somehow to his grandfather, Lawrence. Any thoughts?
Yeah, I figured that there is some Lawrence connection. The way I took this scene (which may be completely wrong) is that Randy didn't mean it generally; I inferred that he actually had seen these books/the chest before. Was it the chest that the 20th Division was supposed to burn, but didn't (pages 253-255)? But anyways, now that we have some experience with these encyclopedic narratives, I'm guessing that the answers to your questions are coming; they may just take awhile.
Yeah, I thought it had to do with Lawrence, but I was still confused as to how he had seen those books. Maybe he had seen similar ones and hence the deja vu? This scene was not that clear to me... I definitely was confused.
I also figured that these were books belonging to Lawrence. I thought that this might even be the Cryptonomicon itself, but that was just a gut instinct.
I'm glad you asked this, because I was wondering too. I bet whatever is in the books is the connection between the two parallel time periods that we've been dealing with--something dealing with Lawrence's work in codes that somehow helps Randy out. Or something. Hopefully we'll find out soon!