The chapel’s voluminous hall was dominated by the largest glass box Langdon had ever seen. The transparent enclosure spanned the entire floor and reached all the way up to the chapel’s two-story ceiling.
The box seemed to be divided into two floors.
On the first floor, Langdon could see hundreds of refrigerator-sized metal cabinets aligned in rows like church pews facing an altar. The cabinets had no doors, and their innards were on full display. Mind-bogglingly intricate matrices of bright red wires dangled from dense grids of contact points, arching down toward the floor, where they were laced together into thick, ropelike harnesses that ran between the machines, creating what looked like a web of veins.
Ordered chaos, Langdon thought.
“On the first floor,” Winston said, “you see the famous MareNostrum supercomputer—forty-eight thousand eight hundred and ninety-six Intel cores communicating over an InfiniBand FDR10 network—one of the fastest machines in the world. MareNostrum was here when Edmond moved in, and rather than removing it, he wanted to incorporate it, so he simply expanded … upward.”
Langdon could now see that all of MareNostrum’s wire harnesses merged at the center of the room, forming a single trunk that climbed vertically like a massive vine into the first floor’s ceiling.
As Langdon’s gaze rose to the second story of the huge glass rectangle, he saw a totally different picture. Here, in the center of the floor, on a raised platform, stood a massive metallic blue-gray cube—ten feet square—with no wires, no blinking lights, and nothing about it to suggest it could possibly be the cutting-edge computer that Winston was currently describing with barely decipherable terminology.
“… qubits replace binary digits … superpositions of states … quantum algorithms … entanglement and tunneling …”
Langdon now knew why he and Edmond talked art rather than computing.
“… resulting in quadrillions of floating-point calculations per second,” Winston concluded. “Making the fusion of these two very different machines the most powerful supercomputer in the world.”
“My God,” Ambra whispered.
“Actually,” Winston corrected, “Edmond’s God.”
CHAPTER 85
ConspiracyNet.com
BREAKING NEWS
KIRSCH DISCOVERY TO AIR WITHIN MINUTES!
Yes, it’s really happening!
A press release from Edmond Kirsch’s camp has just confirmed that his widely anticipated scientific discovery—withheld in the wake of the futurist’s assassination—will be streamed live to the world at the top of the hour (3 a.m. local time in Barcelona).
Viewer participation is reportedly skyrocketing, and global online engagement statistics are unprecedented.
In related news, Robert Langdon and Ambra Vidal were allegedly just spotted entering the grounds of Chapel Torre Girona—home to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, where Edmond Kirsch is believed to have been working for the past several years. Whether this is the site from which the presentation will be live-streamed, ConspiracyNet cannot yet confirm.
Stay tuned for Kirsch’s presentation, available here as a live stream on ConspiracyNet.com!
CHAPTER 86
AS PRINCE JULIÁN passed through the iron doorway into the mountain, he had the uneasy feeling that he might never escape.
The Valley of the Fallen. What am I doing here?
The space beyond the threshold was cold and dark, barely illuminated by two electric torches. The air smelled of damp stone.
A uniformed man stood before them holding a loop of keys that jangled in his trembling hands. Julián was not surprised that this officer of the Patrimonio Nacional seemed anxious; a half-dozen Guardia Real agents were lined up right behind him in the darkness. My father is here. No doubt this poor officer had been summoned in the middle of the night to unlock Franco’s sacred mountain for the king.
One of the Guardia agents quickly stepped forward. “Prince Julián, Bishop Valdespino. We’ve been expecting you. This way, please.”
The Guardia agent led Julián and Valdespino to a massive wrought iron gate on which was carved an ominous Francoist symbol—a fierce double-headed eagle that echoed Nazi iconography.
“His Majesty is at the end of the tunnel,” the agent said, motioning them through the gate, which had been unlocked and stood partially ajar.
Julián and the bishop exchanged uncertain glances and walked through the gate, which was flanked by a pair of menacing metal sculptures—two angels of death, clutching swords shaped like crosses.
More Francoist religio-military imagery, Julián thought as he and the bishop began their long walk into the mountain.
The tunnel that stretched out before them was as elegantly appointed as the ballroom of Madrid’s Royal Palace. With finely polished black marble floors and a soaring coffered ceiling, the sumptuous passageway was lit by a seemingly endless series of wall sconces shaped like torches.
Tonight, however, the source of light in the passageway was far more dramatic. Dozens upon dozens of fire basins—dazzling bowls of fire arranged like runway lights—burned orange all the way down the tunnel. Traditionally, these fires were lit only for major events, but the late-night arrival of the king apparently ranked high enough to set them all aglow.
With reflections of firelight dancing on the burnished floor, the massive hallway took on an almost supernatural ambience. Julián could feel the ghostly presence of those sad souls who had carved this tunnel by hand, their pickaxes and shovels poised, toiling for years inside this cold mountain, hungry, frozen, many dying, all for the glorification of Franco, whose tomb lay deep within this mountain.
Look carefully, son, his father had told him. One day you’ll tear this down.
As king, Julián knew he would probably not have the power to destroy this magnificent structure, and yet he had to admit he felt surprise that the people of Spain had permitted it to stand, especially considering the country’s eagerness to move past her dark past and into the new world. Then again, there were still those who longed for the old ways, and every year, on the anniversary of Franco’s death, hundreds of aging Francoists still flocked to this place to pay their respects.
“Don Julián,” the bishop said quietly, out of earshot of the others, as they walked deeper into the passageway. “Do you know why your father summoned us here?”
Julián shook his head. “I was hoping you would know.”
Valdespino let out an unusually heavy sigh. “I don’t have any idea.”
If the bishop doesn’t know my father’s motives, Julián thought, then nobody knows them.
“I just hope he’s all right,” the bishop said with surprising tenderness. “Some of his decisions lately …”
“You mean like convening a meeting inside a mountain when he should be in a hospital bed?”
Valdespino softly smiled. “For example, yes.”
Julián wondered why the king’s Guardia detail had not intervened and refused to bring the dying monarch out of the hospital to this foreboding location. Then again, Guardia agents were trained to obey without question, especially when the request came from their commander in chief.