The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon, #6)

by Dan Brown

Now, as he stood up, The Golěm could feel the Ether gathering, as it often did in moments of exertion. He quickly took out the metal wand he carried at all times. “Ne seychas,” he whispered, rubbing the wand on top of his head. Not now.

So, he was also one of her patients?

Langdon pondered the image she had sent, which seemed to be a screenshot of her own phone. On her display was a glowing string of seven characters. Langdon recognized the ancient language at once, but he could not begin to imagine what it was doing on Katherine’s phone. She sent me something in…Enochian?

Often called the “Angelic Tongue,” Enochian was a language “discovered” here in Prague in 1583 by the two self-proclaimed English mystics, John Dee and his partner Edward Kelley. It was allegedly the language by which the mediums could speak to spirits and obtain “wisdom from the other realm.”

The only reason Katherine knew Enochian existed was because Langdon had told her ...

Langdon found nothing playful about reading the language of spirits while standing atop a ghost-infested hilltop looking for a woman who had disappeared. It was conceivable that Katherine was not being playful at all, but rather had encoded her message for secrecy.

The translation of Enochian to English was actually an absurdly simple substitution scheme. Langdon had always found it suspiciously convenient that the mystical language discovered by a British clairvoyant turned out to be a letter-by-letter transliteration into English.

She scrolled through several video clips—a mile-long school of bluefish all turning left and right in perfect synch; an endless herd of migrating gazelles, all bounding and leaping in unison; a swarm of fireflies, all illuminating and blinking in unison; a nest of hundreds of sea turtle eggs, all hatching within seconds of one another.

“Some traditional scientists claim behavioral synchronization is actually just an illusion…that these organisms are simply reacting to one another so rapidly that the delay is imperceptible.”

“Unfortunately, a pair of high-speed video cameras linked to atomic clocks at the front and back of a school of fish has shown that their alleged reaction time is faster than the speed of light.”

The starlings are moving as one because they are one…an interconnected system. No separation.

Separation is our shared delusion.” She touched the tablet. “Don’t take it from me, though. Here is one of the most brilliant minds in history.” A new screen appeared—a quote from Albert Einstein. A human being is a part of the whole called by us “universe”… He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us.

The details of the woman’s face were not classically beautiful. She had strong Slavic features, shoulder-length blond hair, and a broken nose…but Sasha Vesna was The Golěm’s entire world.

Okay, meant to protect Sasha and not Katherine. A slight twist.

Although she didn’t know it, Sasha’s soul had collided with his years ago in a Russian mental institution…in

There it is. He was the patient that Gessner was talking about that had left prior to Sasha.

Sasha had been alone and unprotected, enduring a brutal beating from the wicked night nurse, a woman called Malvina, when The Golěm had appeared in the room, unable to bear the abuse any longer. Fueled by an upwelling of outrage, The Golěm had intervened, lashing out with brutal force and breaking the nurse’s neck.

Langdon did not deserve to die, but the man’s presence at Sasha’s apartment would have made it impossible for The Golěm to execute Harris.

THe man he wanted to kill was Harris all along, and not Robert. So, where the hell is Katherine?

There’s a good chance he will never find her, The Golěm thought, recalling what Gessner had confessed last night while ice-cold saline tore through her body. “Katherine has no idea the danger she is in…” Gessner had uttered through the pain. “The people I work for…they will stop at nothing to silence her.”

So, is she somewhere in Prague?

One of the American authors had been killed in Prague? Was it Langdon or Solomon? Clearly, something has gone terribly wrong.

I hope neither!!!

He had long suspected that Brigita Gessner was not the selfless, benevolent soul Sasha seemed to regard her as.

Gessner’s forced confession had filled in the gaps in his understanding…and the betrayals were even more depraved than The Golěm had ever suspected. She had revealed the identity of her influential partners, as well as the chilling details of what they had built beneath Prague.

The head of the snake was an American man named Finch, to whom Gessner answered directly. Finch operated from the safety of an office in London and moved around the world.

Ohhh, so maybe the Golem is keeping everyone, that needs to be, safe?

“your visit to the Four Seasons was reckless…and unfortunate. You were not supposed to witness what you saw.” I gathered as much when that woman’s gun was aimed at my face. “Yes, ma’am. I would be happy to forget what I saw and simply contin—” “Let’s be honest, you won’t forget what you saw. And now you’ve left me no choice but to make sure you understand what you saw.”

Are, the readers, also going to get briefed because I want to know!

it now seemed entirely possible that the note was intended as a means to isolate Langdon…or perhaps to isolate Sasha.

Sasha

Officially known as the Codex Gigas, the “Devil’s Bible” was a mysterious object with a bizarre—some claimed haunted—history. It was the largest book in the world, measuring three feet by nearly two feet, and weighed an astounding 165 pounds.

the codex bore more than a dozen different historical titles—so many, in fact, that one of his students had given it the humorous and simple nickname “Codex XL,” a reference to its extra-large size.

“It has a wooden plank binding that contains more than three hundred pages of hand-scraped vellum, crafted from the skins of a hundred and sixty donkeys. The pages are meticulously calligraphed and include not only the complete Latin Bible but also assorted medical texts, histories, magic formulae, conjurations, and incantations. It even includes an elaborate exorcism—”

According to legend, the scribe who created this illumination did so as a way to thank Satan for a favor. Rumor holds that this massive codex was written in a single night, by a single monk, who was able to complete the inconceivable task only because Satan himself stepped in to help him.”

“Did they seal him into a wall for putting Satan in the Bible?” “No,” Langdon said, “in fact, they sealed him in the wall for breaking his monastic vow of celibacy.

before the final brick was placed, the monk begged for mercy and was offered a chance at redemption. The monastery’s abbot left the last brick unlaid and told him that he would be freed only if he could create, within a single night, a book that contained all the world’s knowledge.”

“when the abbot returned and peered through the opening, the prisoner was sitting atop a massive codex, explaining that he had sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the book.

“History contains many inexplicable anomalies,

“That’s why I’m a physics major,” chimed in a quiet student in the front row. “Sorry to burst your bubble,” Langdon said with a chuckle, “but science doesn’t do much better on anomalies. Perhaps you could explain for us the double-slit experiment? Or the horizon problem? Or Schrödinger’s—” “I retract!” the kid surrendered good-naturedly.

Is the discovery in Katherine’s book really worth killing for?

“is called nonlocal consciousness. And it’s based on the premise that consciousness is not localized to your brain…but rather it is everywhere. That is to say, consciousness permeates the universe. Consciousness is, in fact, one of the fundamental building blocks of our world.”

“In the nonlocal model,” she continued, “your brain does not create consciousness, but rather your brain experiences what already exists around it.” She glanced from Faukman to Langdon and back. “In simple English, our brains interact with an existing matrix of awareness.”

“Let’s say Mozart traveled ahead in time and joined us right now at this table for lunch—he would be amazed to hear music coming out of that tiny box. In his world, there were no recordings. When he heard music, there was always an orchestra present. Seeing this speaker, he might mistakenly conclude there is an orchestra hidden behind the wall—or even a miniature orchestra inside the speaker itself. There would be no other options within his intellectual grasp. He would never conclude that the music was in fact hovering silently all around us in the form of radio waves and was somehow being received by this speaker.”

“Your brain is just a receiver—an unimaginably complex, superbly advanced receiver—that chooses which specific signals it wants to receive from the existing cloud of global consciousness. Just like a Wi-Fi signal, global consciousness is always hovering there, fully intact, whether or not you access it.”

This would explain people having knowledge that their lives do not explain them having.

Sudden savant syndrome has been medically documented numerous times.”

This!!!

the same holds true for many people with Asperger’s or autism,” she added. “They can have highly specialized receivers that provide them access to remarkable skills and insights, and yet simultaneously make it difficult to perform routine tasks. It’s a bit like wearing binoculars instead of eyeglasses; you could see much farther than most…and yet your immediate surroundings would be blurry.”

Night watchman Mark S. Dole reveled in his job at Random House Tower. For two years now, he had been securing this building, feeling a sense of pride whenever he donned his blue jacket and security cap and took his place behind the lobby’s imposing security counter. He was twenty-eight and had promised his wife he’d be promoted to the day shift by the time he was thirty.

Please don't kill him.

One of the perks he loved most about working here was the free employee library—a basement storeroom brimming with everything from old classics to modern thrillers.

That sounds heavenly.

the underground facility Finch had built was located somewhere else in the city.

As The Golěm crossed Old Town Square, he passed near a throng of tourists huddled around a bronze statue and sipping hot svařák out of plastic cups. The voice of their tour guide blared loudly over a handheld megaphone.

Unlike The DaVinci Code, he is not involved with the overall scheme.

A faceless creature who carries the burden of a weaker soul. The Golěm had felt an immediate kinship with the statue. The tiny supported man represented Kafka, who, in his story Description of a Struggle, had been supported by a protective friend called his “acquaintance.” The acquaintance carried Kafka, The Golěm had realized, just as the golem carried the Jewish people. Just as I carry Sasha.

Today I will infiltrate Threshold. Sasha had not been their first victim…nor would she be their last. It all had to be destroyed. Forever.

Honestly, after all that they have done...go Golem?

“Halos are entirely misunderstood,” she had said. “They have always been imagined as radiant streams of light encircling the head and depicting energy flowing out of an enlightened mind. But I believe we are interpreting halos in reverse. Those rays represent beams of consciousness…flowing in…not out.

To say someone has an ‘enlightened mind’ is simply another way of saying they have a ‘better receiver.’ ”

In Acts 9, the Apostle Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus was described as the result of a burst of energy received from heaven. In Acts 2, the Holy Spirit flowed into the apostles and gave them the instantaneous power to speak in multiple languages so they could preach the gospel. Sudden savant syndrome?

“If you ask me,” Katherine said, “your eidetic memory should be proof enough, Robert. I know you believe your brain has stored every single image you’ve ever seen. But full photographic recall is a physical impossibility. Your lifetime of vivid image data would fill a warehouse, even using the most advanced digital storage methods, and yet you can still recall that data perfectly. The truth is, the human brain—even your brain—is physically far too small to hold that much information.”

“Whatever it takes to get you Americans into museums, right?!”

The comment would have been more offensive had Langdon not heard that one of Prague’s most popular tourist attractions was now an underground shooting range where Americans could legally fire an exotic array of automatic weapons.

Why does this seem like the most real thing.