Origin

“That’s a valid point, Professor,” Winston interjected. “Although I believe it overlooks one important fact: those conspiracy stories are a significant reason why so many viewers all over the world are now tuned in. There were 3.8 million during Edmond’s online broadcast earlier this evening; but now, after all the dramatic events of the last several hours, I estimate that some two hundred million people are following this story through online news reports, social media, television, and radio.”

The number seemed staggering to Langdon, although he recalled that more than two hundred million people had watched the FIFA World Cup final, and five hundred million had watched the first lunar landing a half century ago when nobody had Internet, and televisions were far less widespread globally.

“You may not see this in academia, Professor,” Winston said, “but the rest of the world has become a reality TV show. Ironically, the people who tried to silence Edmond tonight have accomplished the opposite; Edmond now has the largest audience for any scientific announcement in history. It reminds me of the Vatican denouncing your book Christianity and the Sacred Feminine, which, in the aftermath, promptly became a bestseller.”

Almost a bestseller, Langdon thought, but Winston’s point was taken.

“Maximizing viewership was always one of Edmond’s primary goals tonight,” Winston said.

“He’s right,” Ambra said, looking at Langdon. “When Edmond and I brainstormed the live Guggenheim event, he was obsessed with increasing audience engagement and capturing as many eyeballs as possible.”

“As I said,” Winston stressed, “we are reaching our point of media saturation, and there is no better time than the present to unveil his discovery.”

“Understood,” Langdon said. “Just tell us what to do.”

Continuing down the hallway, they arrived at an unexpected obstacle—a ladder awkwardly propped across the corridor as if for a painting job—making it impossible to advance without moving the ladder or passing beneath it.

“This ladder,” Langdon offered. “Shall I take it down?”

“No,” Winston said. “Edmond deliberately put it there a long time ago.”

“Why?” Ambra asked.

“As you may know, Edmond despised superstition in all forms. He made a point of walking under a ladder every day on his way into work—a way of thumbing his nose at the gods. Moreover, if any guest or technician refused to walk under this ladder, Edmond kicked them out of the building.”

Always so reasonable. Langdon smiled, recalling how Edmond had once berated him in public for “knocking on wood” for luck. Robert, unless you’re a closet Druid who still raps on trees to wake them up, please leave that ignorant superstition in the past where it belongs!

Ambra pressed on, ducking down and walking beneath the ladder. With an admittedly irrational twinge of trepidation, Langdon followed suit.

When they reached the other side, Winston guided them around a corner to a large security door that had two cameras and a biometric scan.

A handmade sign hung above the door: ROOM 13.

Langdon eyed the infamously unlucky number. Edmond spurning the gods once again.

“This is the entrance to his lab,” Winston said. “Other than the hired technicians who helped Edmond build it, very few have been permitted access.”

With that, the security door buzzed loudly, and Ambra wasted no time grabbing the handle and heaving it open. She took one step over the threshold, stopped short, and raised her hand to her mouth with a startled gasp. When Langdon looked past her into the church’s sanctuary, he understood her reaction.

The chapel’s voluminous hall was dominated by the largest glass box Langdon had ever seen. The transparent enclosure spanned the entire floor and reached all the way up to the chapel’s two-story ceiling.

The box seemed to be divided into two floors.

On the first floor, Langdon could see hundreds of refrigerator-sized metal cabinets aligned in rows like church pews facing an altar. The cabinets had no doors, and their innards were on full display. Mind-bogglingly intricate matrices of bright red wires dangled from dense grids of contact points, arching down toward the floor, where they were laced together into thick, ropelike harnesses that ran between the machines, creating what looked like a web of veins.

Ordered chaos, Langdon thought.

“On the first floor,” Winston said, “you see the famous MareNostrum supercomputer—forty-eight thousand eight hundred and ninety-six Intel cores communicating over an InfiniBand FDR10 network—one of the fastest machines in the world. MareNostrum was here when Edmond moved in, and rather than removing it, he wanted to incorporate it, so he simply expanded … upward.”