Origin (55 page)

After the word “password,” a black cursor blinked expectantly.

“That’s it?” Langdon asked, feeling somehow like it was all too simple. “I just enter it
here
?”

“Exactly,” Winston replied. “Once you enter the password, this PC will send an authenticated ‘unlock’ message to the sealed partition in the main computer that contains Edmond’s presentation. I will then have access and be able to manage the feed, align it with the top of the hour, and push the data to all the main distribution channels for global relay.”

Langdon more or less followed the explanation, and yet as he stared
down at the clunky computer and telephone modem, he felt perplexed. “I don’t understand, Winston, after all of Edmond’s planning tonight, why would he
ever
trust his entire presentation to a phone call to a prehistoric modem?”

“I would say that’s just Edmond being Edmond,” Winston replied. “As you know, he was passionate about drama, symbolism, and history, and I suspect it brought him enormous joy to power up his very first computer and use it to launch his life’s greatest work.”

Fair point
, Langdon reflected, realizing that was exactly how Edmond would have seen it.

“Moreover,” Winston added, “I suspect Edmond probably had contingencies in place, but either way, there’s logic to using an ancient computer to ‘throw a switch.’ Simple tasks require simple tools. And security-wise, using a slow processor ensures that a brute-force hacking of the system would take forever.”

“Robert?” Ambra urged behind him, giving his shoulder an encouraging squeeze.

“Yes, sorry, all set.” Langdon pulled the Tandy keyboard closer to him, its tightly coiled cable stretching out like an old rotary phone cord. He laid his fingers on the plastic keys and pictured the line of handwritten text that he and Ambra had discovered in the crypt at Sagrada Família.

The dark religions are departed & sweet science reigns.

The grand finale of William Blake’s epic poem
The Four Zoas
seemed the perfect choice to unlock Edmond’s final scientific revelation—a discovery he claimed would change everything.

Langdon took a deep breath and carefully typed in the line of poetry, with no spaces, and replaced the ampersand with the ligature
et.

When he finished, he looked up at the screen.

Langdon counted the dots—forty-seven.

Perfect. Here goes nothing.

Langdon made eye contact with Ambra and she gave him a nod. He reached out and hit the return key.

Instantly, the computer emitted a dull buzz.

Langdon’s heart thundered.

“Ambra—I typed it perfectly! I’m
sure
of it!” He spun in his chair and looked up at her, fully expecting to see her face filled with fear.

Instead, Ambra Vidal stared down at him with an amused smile. She shook her head and laughed.

“
Professor
,” she whispered, pointing to his keyboard. “Your caps lock is on.”

At that moment, deep inside a mountain, Prince Julián stood transfixed, staring across the subterranean basilica, trying to make sense of the baffling scene before him. His father, the king of Spain, sat motionless in a wheelchair, parked in the most remote and private section of this basilica.

With a surge of dread, Julián rushed to his side. “Father?”

As Julián arrived, the king slowly opened his eyes, apparently emerging from a nap. The ailing monarch managed a relaxed smile. “Thank you for coming, son,” he whispered, his voice frail.

Julián crouched down in front of the wheelchair, relieved that his father was alive but also alarmed at how dramatically the man had deteriorated in just a few days. “Father? Are you okay?”

The king shrugged. “As well as can be expected,” he replied with surprisingly good humor. “How are
you
? Your day has been … eventful.”

Julián had no idea how to reply. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I was tired of the hospital and wanted some air.”

“Fine, but …
here
?” Julián knew his father had always abhorred this shrine’s symbolic link to persecution and intolerance.

“Your Majesty!” called Valdespino, hurrying around the altar and joining them, breathless. “What in the world!”

The king smiled at his lifelong friend. “Antonio, welcome.”

Antonio?
Prince Julián had never heard his father address Bishop Valdespino by his first name. In public, it was always “Your Excellency.”

The king’s uncharacteristic lack of formality seemed to rattle the bishop. “Thank … you,” he stammered. “Are you okay?”

“Simply wonderful,” the king replied, smiling broadly. “I am in the presence of the two people I trust most in the world.”

Valdespino shot an uneasy glance at Julián and then turned back to the king. “Your Majesty, I’ve delivered your son to you as you requested. Shall I leave you two to talk in private?”

“No, Antonio,” the king said. “This will be a confession. And I need my priest at my side.”

Valdespino shook his head. “I don’t think your son expects you to explain your actions and behavior tonight. I’m sure he—”

“Tonight?” The king laughed. “No, Antonio, I am confessing the secret I’ve kept from Julián his entire life.”

AMBRA VIDAL FELT
a flood of exhilaration as the antique computer pinged happily after Langdon’s second attempt to enter the line of poetry.

Thank God
, she thought as Langdon stood up from the desk and turned to her. Ambra immediately put her arms around him and squeezed him in a heartfelt embrace.
Edmond would be so grateful.

“Two minutes and thirty-three seconds,” Winston chimed.

Ambra let go of Langdon, both of them turning to the LCD screens overhead. The center screen displayed a countdown clock she had last seen in the Guggenheim.

More than two hundred million people?
Ambra was stunned. Apparently while she and Langdon were fleeing across Barcelona, the entire world had taken notice.
Edmond’s audience has become astronomical.

Beside the countdown screen, the live security feeds continued to play, and Ambra noticed a sudden shift in the police activity outside. One by one, the officers who had been pounding on doors and talking on radios stopped what they were doing, pulled out their smartphones, and stared down into them. The patio outside the church gradually became a sea of pale, eager faces illuminated by the glow of their handheld displays.

Edmond has stopped the world in its tracks
, Ambra thought, feeling an eerie sense of responsibility that people around the globe were preparing to view a presentation that would be streaming out of this very room.
I wonder if Julián is watching
, she thought, then quickly pushed him from her mind.

“The program is now cued,” Winston said. “I believe you’ll both be more comfortable watching in Edmond’s sitting area at the other end of this lab.”

“Thank you, Winston,” Langdon said, ushering Ambra barefoot across the smooth glass floor, past the blue-gray metallic cube, and into Edmond’s sitting area.

Here, an Oriental carpet had been spread out on the glass floor, along with a collection of elegant furniture and an exercise bike.

As Ambra stepped off the glass onto the soft carpet, she felt her body begin to relax. She climbed onto the couch and pulled her feet up beneath her, looking around for Edmond’s television. “Where do we watch?”

Langdon apparently didn’t hear, having walked to the corner of the room to look at something, but Ambra got her answer an instant later when the entire rear wall of the chamber began glowing from within. A familiar image appeared, projected out from inside the glass.

The entire wall is a display?

Ambra stared at the eight-foot-tall image as the lights in the church slowly dimmed. Winston, it seemed, was making them at home for Edmond’s big show.

Ten feet away, in the corner of the room, Langdon stood transfixed—not by the massive television wall, but by a small object he had just spotted; it was displayed on an elegant pedestal as if it were part of a museum exhibition.

Before him, a single test tube was ensconced in a metal display case with a glass front. The test tube was corked and labeled, and contained a murky brownish liquid. For a moment, Langdon wondered if maybe it were some kind of medicine Edmond had been taking. Then he read the name on the label.

That’s impossible
, he told himself.
Why would this be here?!

There were very few “famous” test tubes in the world, but Langdon knew this one certainly qualified.
I can’t believe Edmond owns one of these!
He had probably purchased this scientific artifact under the radar
for an enormous price.
Just like he did with the Gauguin painting in Casa Milà.

Langdon crouched down and peered at the seventy-year-old glass vial. Its masking-tape label was faded and worn, but the two names on the tube were still legible:
MILLER-UREY
.

The hair on the back of Langdon’s neck stood up as he read the names again.

MILLER-UREY
.

My God … Where do we come from?

Chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey had conducted a legendary scientific experiment in the 1950s attempting to answer that very question. Their bold experiment had failed, but their efforts had been lauded worldwide and been known ever since as the Miller-Urey experiment.

Langdon recalled being mesmerized in high school biology class to learn how these two scientists had attempted to re-create the conditions at the dawn of earth’s creation—a hot planet covered by a churning, lifeless ocean of boiling chemicals.

The primordial soup.

After duplicating the chemicals that existed in the early oceans and atmosphere—water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen—Miller and Urey heated the concoction to simulate the boiling seas. Then they shocked it with electric charges to mimic lightning. And finally, they let the mixture cool, just as the planet’s oceans had cooled.

Their goal was simple and audacious—to spark life from a lifeless primal sea.
To simulate “Creation,”
Langdon thought,
using only science.

Miller and Urey studied the mixture in hopes that primitive microorganisms might form in the chemical-rich concoction—an unprecedented process known as
abiogenesis
. Sadly, their attempts to create “life” from lifeless matter did not succeed. Rather than life, they were left with nothing but a collection of inert glass vials that now languished in a dark closet at the University of California in San Diego.

To this day, Creationists still cited the Miller-Urey Experiment’s failure as scientific proof that life could
not
have appeared on earth without help from the hand of God.

“Thirty seconds,” Winston’s voice boomed overhead.

Langdon’s thoughts spun as he stood up and stared into the darkened church around them. Just minutes ago, Winston had declared that science’s greatest breakthroughs were those that created new “models” of the universe. He had also said that MareNostrum specialized in computer modeling—simulating complex systems and watching them run.

The Miller-Urey Experiment
, Langdon thought,
is an example of early modeling … simulating the complex chemical interactions occurring on primordial earth.

“Robert!” Ambra called from across the room. “It’s starting.”

“On my way,” he replied, moving toward the couch, suddenly overwhelmed by the suspicion that he might just have glimpsed a part of what Edmond had been working on.

As he crossed the floor, Langdon recalled Edmond’s dramatic preamble above the Guggenheim’s grassy meadow.
Tonight, let us be like the early explorers
, he had said,
those who left everything behind and set out across vast oceans. The age of religion is drawing to a close, and the age of science is dawning. Just imagine what would happen if we miraculously learned the answers to life’s big questions.