Page 214 of The Secret of Secrets

The ambassador looked emotional now too. “Believe it or not, Sasha…you already have.”

As Sasha broke down, the ambassador stepped forward and gave her a long hug that reminded Sasha of the hugs her mother used to give when she was only four or five…before she was a damaged girl. Sasha had not been hugged like that in many, many years.

Chapter 137

The winter sun had just risen over Prague, its muted rays glinting off the skyline of snow-covered spires.

Langdon was feeling anxious about the final piece of unfinished business he needed to resolve before he and Katherine flew out this afternoon. He wondered how she would react when he explained the delicate situation.

I almost told her earlier, he thought, but despite a sincere desire to share what had happened, Langdon had never quite found the right moment. Enjoy your breakfast, he reassured himself. It will all work out.

Ninety minutes ago, after some weighty final discussions with the ambassador and an uncertain farewell with Sasha, Langdon and Katherine had exited the embassy and, at Nagel’s personal recommendation, walked a mere twenty paces across the cobblestone plaza to the Alchymist Hotel for their famed “prosecco breakfast.”

The hotel made its home in an impeccably restored sixteenth-century Baroque mansion whose large inner courtyard, every winter, was converted into an ice-skating rink that glistened beneath a canopy of twinkling lights. The dining room decor was fanciful, with crimson upholstered chairs, glittering Murano chandeliers, and “Corinthian twist” gold pillars that looked like a storybook movie set.

At a quiet window table overlooking the rink, Langdon and Katherine had finished a sumptuous breakfast that culminated in fig dumplings topped with edible gold flakes. Fully sated and having reflected at length on the morning’s events, they were now quietly sipping chicory melta and gazing out at the ice rink, where a young woman had just arrived and was lacing up her skates.

“The skating nun?” Langdon offered, referencing their waiter’s ghost story about a nun who had died on this spot centuries ago and who materialized occasionally to skate peaceful patterns on the ice.

“I think not,” Katherine replied as the young woman shed her coat to reveal a skimpy skating costume bejeweled in white sequins and silver beadwork.

As the young woman stepped onto the ice, she seemed surprisingly off-balance for someone with such an elaborate outfit. Odd, Langdon thought, watching her stumble awkwardly to the middle of the rink, where she stopped, fluffed up her hair, raised a phone, and began taking selfies.

“Mystery solved,” Langdon said. “Instagram skater.”

“Our new reality,” Katherine said with a laugh.

“Doesn’t it concern you?” he said, turning to her. “Young people broadcasting themselves nonstop to the world? I see it every day on campus. Even the world’s ‘best and brightest’ seem far more interested in the online world than the real one.”

“That could be true,” she said, taking a sip of her tea. “But first of all, it’s not just young people doing it. And second, I think you have to consider that the online world is a real world.”

“A real world where love is expressed with emoticons and measured in ‘likes’?”

“Robert, when you see someone glued to a phone, you see a person ignoring this world—rather than a person engrossed in another world…a world that, like this one, is made up of communities, friends, beauty, horror, love, conflict, right and wrong. It’s all there. The online world is not so different from our world…except for one stark difference.” Katherine smiled. “It’s nonlocal.”

The comment caught him off guard.

“The online world,” Katherine said, “is untethered from your location. You inhabit it as a bodiless mind…free from all physical restraints. You move effortlessly anywhere, see what you want, learn what you want, interact with other bodiless minds.”

Langdon had never considered the Internet in that light, and it both startled and intrigued him. Online, I am a bodiless consciousness…

“When we lose ourselves in the virtual world,” Katherine said, “we are giving ourselves a kind of nonlocal experience that, in many ways, parallels an out-of-body experience—we are detached, weightless, and yet connected to all things. Our filters are dropped…We can interact with the entire world through one screen and experience almost anything.”

Langdon realized Katherine was exactly right.

She drained the last of her melta and dabbed the linen napkin to her lips. “Anyhow, I wrote about all of this in my book. It’s an unusual idea, but I’ve come to believe that our current technological explosion is actually part of a spiritual evolution…a kind of training ground for the existence that, in the end, is our ultimate destiny…a consciousness, untethered from the physical world, and yet connected to all things.”

Langdon sat back, thoroughly impressed by the trailblazing genius of Katherine’s ideas.

“It all funnels into one larger concept,” Katherine said fervently. “Death is not the end. There’s more work to do, but science continues to discover evidence that there is indeed something beyond all this. That message is one we should be shouting from the mountaintops, Robert! It’s the secret of all secrets. Just imagine the impact it will have on the future of the human race.”

“And that is why you still need to publish your book!”

The comment elicited a frown from Katherine, snapping her back to reality, and Langdon wished he’d kept his thoughts to himself. Even so, he’d been excited to learn that the CIA director had agreed there would be no interference with any future publication of Katherine’s book—provided she remove a handful of sensitive paragraphs and, of course, omit her patent application. Katherine’s response to the good news had been subdued, which was not surprising considering she was still livid with the agency, not to mention daunted by the prospect of starting the writing process all over again.

Langdon shifted, feeling restless that he’d upset her.

“So,” he ventured quietly, “still want to see Prague Castle before we fly out?”