Page 118 of The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6)
Katherine stared into the barrel of Finch’s gun, feeling like she had just been jolted back to reality. The CIA’s “death lab” was no consciousness research facility…it was a mission control for an astonishing new kind of weaponized remote viewing.
In Katherine’s world of noetics, Threshold would be the ultimate triumph. The key to understanding nonlocal consciousness had always been understanding out-of-body experiences; but that understanding had always faced two massive hurdles.
And Threshold solved them both.
The first hurdle was that out-of-body states were rare, fleeting, and often unpredictable.
Only a few uniquely skilled individuals were capable of “projecting at will,” and even they struggled to maintain the out-of-body state for a full minute.
At Threshold, however, using Gessner’s pods, anyone could be forced into an out-of-body state and suspended there for an hour or more.
Terrifying but true.
The second challenge with OBEs was recall.
Upon returning to their bodies from an out-of-body state, subjects reported the experience faded almost instantly, like a dream, creating challenges for researchers looking for detailed data they could trust. But now, with Threshold’s neural brain implant, those experiences could be recorded and studied.
A potential quantum leap for consciousness research, this facility had the potential to unveil the deepest secrets of the human mind.
Including the nature of death itself. And yet, to Katherine’s enormous frustration, rather than delving into the mysteries of consciousness and death, the CIA had harnessed nonlocal consciousness to create a surveillance coup of unimaginable proportions.
Katherine was still struggling to accept that a technology like this could truly exist and that it could be weaponized so effortlessly.
“One thing I don’t understand,” Katherine said. “The brain implant…the neural mesh integrated so quickly—”
“I’ve heard enough,” Langdon interrupted, eyeing Finch’s gun, still aimed at them both. “Sir, Katherine’s manuscript is destroyed. She’s not going to publish her book. We’re willing to sign your NDA. You can put the gun away.”
“In due time,” Finch said, glancing over his shoulder at the doorway as if expecting someone. “I’m pleased that Dr. Solomon noticed we integrated her neural mesh so quickly.”
Impossibly quickly, Katherine noted. According to the records they’d found, the rate at which Sasha’s existing neurons had fused with her artificial ones was ten times faster than natural growth patterns, or anything Katherine had seen in a lab setting.
“The solution,” Finch boasted, “is a new technique we call ‘forced cooperation’—a kind of joint puzzle solving. We use virtual reality to feed the same puzzle into both the subject’s brain and also the implanted chip at the same time.
As you know, when disconnected neurons sense they can be more efficient by sharing information, they form new synapses. ”
The most brilliant solutions are always the simplest, Katherine thought, and this strategy was exactly that—elegant in its simplicity.
By presenting the identical challenge to two discrete processing machines—a human brain and a computer chip—they encouraged the two entities to cooperate…
motivating them to synapse as quickly as possible.
Neurons that fire together… wire together.
The process was known as Hebbian learning, and it had been part of the neuroscience field since the 1930s when Donald Hebb discovered that the brain, when challenged repeatedly with intense tasks, would grow new neural pathways very quickly, in much the same way a weight lifter grew muscles by exercising.
“And the drugs in the VR lab?” Katherine asked. “I assume psychedelics amplify neural plasticity?”
“They do,” Finch said. “In addition to stimulating growth, the drugs are used to make the puzzles more challenging by forcing the brain to focus through a fog. It’s like a marathoner who trains in weighted sneakers. The added burden speeds up adaptation.”
Katherine was amazed. “You didn’t get this idea from my thesis,” Katherine said. “Was it Brigita’s idea?”
“Much of it, yes. She was not always easy, and we disagreed fundamentally on many things, but we couldn’t have built Threshold without her.”
“Katherine’s thesis,” Langdon demanded. “How did the CIA have access to it?”
“The Blavatnik Awards submissions,” he said. “Those submissions always contain the boldest ideas from the sharpest young minds. So back then the CIA always made sure that one of the judges was from Stanford Research Institute.”
SRI? Katherine was amazed the connection had not occurred to her immediately upon learning of the CIA’s involvement in her missing manuscript.
Stanford Research Institute had long-standing ties to the CIA and was even believed by conspiracy theorists to be the birthplace of Stargate.
An SRI “professor” on the judges panel for the Blavatnik Awards could easily have been a spy hiding in plain sight.
“When your thesis didn’t win even an honorable mention,” Finch said, “your Princeton professor—Cosgrove, I believe—questioned the prize committee relentlessly, especially the judge from Stanford. He figured out SRI was involved and knew enough to back off and never speak of it again.”
“We want to leave,” Langdon said. “Now.”
“You’re in no position to make demands, Professor,” Finch said. “You’ve broken into a top secret facility and violated many laws. And if you think the ambassador is going to come and save you, I doubt she is free to go anywhere at the moment.”
“If Katherine and I disappear,” Langdon said, his tone threatening, “ many people will notice. It won’t be like your anonymous test subject Sysevich.”
“You know nothing of what happened to Dmitri.”
“We know you used him as a human guinea pig,” Katherine said. “Along with Sasha Vesna.”
“They were living tortured lives,” Finch fired back. “Gessner saved them. She cured their epilepsy and gave them a life.”
“ That’s your rationale?” Langdon challenged. “Does Dmitri have a better life now? We saw his records. It looks like he died here!”
“Professor,” Finch said, shifting position and aiming the gun at Langdon now.
“It must be luxurious to live in academia and not face the real problems in our country…not worry about those who want to destroy the Western way of life. The world is an extremely dangerous place, and people like me are the only reason your city of Boston is still standing. I mean that quite literally.”
“That may be true,” Langdon replied, “but it doesn’t give you the right to experiment on human beings without their knowledge.”
Finch stared at him. “The ultimate test of a man’s conscience is his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.”
“If you’re going to steal a quote,” Langdon fired back, “you should know what it means. Gaylord Nelson was referring to saving the environment, not abusing innocent people.”
“Sasha is far from innocent,” Finch said. “She murdered Dr. Gessner.”
“That’s absurd,” Langdon said. “Sasha loved Brigita. There’s no—”
“She also killed my field officer upstairs,” Finch said. “I half expected it was Sasha who had broken into Threshold. I found an epilepsy wand upstairs near my officer’s dead body…and there’s only one person it could belong to.”
“That wand is mine, ” declared a ghostly voice in the darkness. “And I want it back.”