Page 156 of The Secret of Secrets

Langdon nodded as he recalled holding Sasha’s head during her seizure. “Mostly hidden beneath her hair, but yes. I assumed they were from injuries, but later she did mention that Gessner had encountered some minor complications implanting her chip; the surgery was successful…but also a little more invasive than planned.”

“A little?” Katherine glanced back up at the robotic surgeon. “This machine is not pristine; it’s been used before, and I hate to say this, but Sasha would be a perfect test subject. Naive, no family, unlikely to question the follow-up procedures recommended by a famous doctor who saved her life and is now paying her salary.”

The thought seemed reprehensible to Langdon, but he forced himself to focus on the matter at hand. “Do you see anything here related to what you’ve written about?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. And there’s nothing particularly incriminating here to take with us as proof of what they’re even doing. All I can tell you is that they’re doing some highly advanced, in-house brain surgery.”

The Island of Dr. Moreau, Langdon thought, unsettled by the notion of the CIA performing secret surgeries in an underground lab on foreign soil. “Let’s keep looking.”

They quickly exited the medical suite, returning to the black-tiled corridor, continuing deeper into Threshold.

They reached another alcove that also contained a doorway, but this door was covered in a thick layer of acoustical foam.

“Immersive Computing,” Katherine said, reading the placard beside the door. “This could be something.”

Uncertain what to expect, Langdon followed Katherine into a chamber whose walls, ceiling, and floor appeared to be covered in black carpet. The only light came from the muted baseboard lighting that had faded on as they entered.

Running down the middle of the room was a row of eight, unusually deep, reclining chairs equipped with shoulder-strap seat belts. Each one sat atop its own tangle of hydraulic arms and valves. “They’re on gimbals,” Langdon said. “These chairs move.”

Katherine nodded, moving toward them. “Immersive computing is essentially advanced virtual reality. The motion of these chairs is synchronized with the images and sound being fed into these.” She lifted some kind of futuristic, opaque glass helmet off the chair. “Deep-spectrum panoramic displays. This is exceptionally advanced virtual reality, Robert.”

Virtual reality? What would they be doing here?

Katherine headed for a computer workstation at the back of the room. “The data required to run these VR simulations is massive, and they no doubt run it off a larger system…like that one.” She pointed at a plate-glass window with banks of computers behind it. “Although I suspect everything is accessed out here, at this terminal.” Katherine sat down and turned on the computer.

Langdon joined her as they waited for the terminal to power up. “Did you mention VR in your manuscript?”

Katherine glanced up at him, nodding. “A few times, yes, but just anecdotally. I was once a subject in a VR experiment at Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research, and my experience played a role in my decision to study nonlocal consciousness. So I wrote about it.”

“Really? That seems like it could be relevant.”

“In principle, perhaps,” she said, looking skeptical. “But not—”

“Tell me,” Langdon said.

“Well…as you know, the goal of VR is essentially to trick the brain into believing an illusion. The more virtual input you can feed the mind—sights, sounds, motion—the more likely you are to convince the brain to accept an artificial situation as real. That moment you start believing the illusion is a state that psychologists call ‘presence.’ ”

“I did some virtual rock climbing,” Langdon said. “I was quite literally paralyzed with fear.”

“Exactly. Your mind believed your body was on a cliff and in danger. The illusion became your temporary reality. I too experienced ‘presence’ in the VR experiment at Princeton, although…the experience was quite a bit different. Transformative, really.”

“What was it?”

She glanced up from the computer and smiled. “Simply stated…I experienced my own consciousness—and it was nonlocal.”

Katherine would never forget that first magical encounter with “detachment from self.” The experience had changed her life, cementing her passion for consciousness as a field of study.

The experiment began with her Princeton professor asking Katherine to stand all alone in an empty room. Over the intercom, he instructed her to don her VR goggles. When she did, she was instantly transported to a vast meadow where she stood among flowers and trees.

The scene was bucolic…with one unexpected twist.

She was no longer alone.

Standing only two feet away was an exact double of…herself. The double was smiling calmly and gazing directly into Katherine’s eyes. As Katherine looked upon her other self, she knew of course that it was a projection, and yet the sensation was disquieting. She stood for nearly a minute in the meadow, face-to-face with herself.

Next, the professor’s voice on the intercom instructed Katherine to reach up and place a hand on the shoulder of her ghost double. This confused Katherine. My double is not real. Uncertain, Katherine raised her hand and lowered it gently toward the shoulder of her other self. Fully expecting to touch nothing but air, she was shocked when her hand came to rest on an actual physical shoulder. More shocking still, in that exact instant, Katherine felt the weight of her hand on her own shoulder!

The effect was completely disorienting, and her brain suddenly found itself asking: