I pray aloud … I smell you on my skin … I say your name.
As Langdon got closer, though, he realized that the moving bands were in fact stationary; the illusion of motion was created by a “skin” of tiny LED lights positioned on each vertical beam. The lights lit up in rapid succession to form words that materialized out of the floor, raced up the beam, and disappeared into the ceiling.
I’m crying hard … There was blood … No one told me.
Langdon moved in and around the vertical beams, taking it all in.
“This is a challenging piece,” the audio guide declared, returning suddenly. “It is called Installation for Bilbao and was created by conceptual artist Jenny Holzer. It consists of nine LED signboards, each forty feet tall, transmitting quotes in Basque, Spanish, and English—all relating to the horrors of AIDS and the pain endured by those left behind.”
Langdon had to admit, the effect was mesmerizing and somehow heartbreaking.
“Perhaps you’ve seen Jenny Holzer’s work before?”
Langdon felt hypnotized by the text coursing skyward.
I bury my head … I bury your head … I bury you.
“Mr. Langdon?” the voice in his head chimed. “Can you hear me? Is your headset working?”
Langdon was jolted from his thoughts. “I’m sorry—what? Hello?”
“Yes, hello,” the voice replied. “I believe we’ve already said our greetings? I’m just checking to see if you can hear me?”
“I … I’m sorry,” Langdon stammered, spinning away from the exhibit and looking out across the atrium. “I thought you were a recording! I didn’t realize I had a real person on the line.” Langdon pictured a cubicle farm manned by an army of curators armed with headsets and museum catalogs.
“No problem, sir. I’ll be your personal guide for the evening. Your headset has a microphone in it as well. This program is intended as an interactive experience in which you and I can have a dialogue about art.”
Langdon could now see that other guests were also speaking into their headsets. Even those who had come as couples appeared to have separated a bit, exchanging bemused looks as they carried on private conversations with their personal docents.
“Every guest here has a private guide?”
“Yes, sir. Tonight we are individually touring three hundred and eighteen guests.”
“That’s incredible.”
“Well, as you know, Edmond Kirsch is an avid fan of art and technology. He designed this system specifically for museums, in hopes of replacing group tours, which he despises. This way, every visitor can enjoy a private tour, move at his own pace, ask the question he might be embarrassed to ask in a group situation. It is really much more intimate and immersive.”
“Not to sound old-fashioned, but why not just walk each of us around in person?”
“Logistics,” the man replied. “Adding personal docents to a museum event would literally double the number of people on the floor and necessarily cut in half the number of possible visitors. Moreover, the cacophony of all the docents lecturing simultaneously would be distracting. The idea here is to make discussion a seamless experience. One of the objectives of art, Mr. Kirsch always says, is to promote dialogue.”
“I entirely agree,” Langdon replied, “and that’s why people often visit museums with a date or a friend. These headsets might be considered a bit antisocial.”
“Well,” the Brit replied, “if you come with a date or friends, you can assign all the headsets to a single docent and enjoy a group discussion. The software is really quite advanced.”
“You seem to have an answer for everything.”
“That is, in fact, my job.” The guide gave an embarrassed laugh and abruptly shifted gears. “Now, Professor, if you move across the atrium toward the windows, you’ll see the museum’s largest painting.”
As Langdon began walking across the atrium, he passed an attractive thirtysomething couple wearing matching white baseball caps. Emblazoned on the front of both caps, rather than a corporate logo, was a surprising symbol.
It was an icon Langdon knew well, and yet he had never seen it on a cap. In recent years, this highly stylized letter A had become the universal symbol for one of the planet’s fastest-growing and increasingly vocal demographics—atheists—who had begun speaking out more forcefully every day against what they considered the dangers of religious belief.
Atheists now have their own baseball caps?
As he surveyed the congregation of tech-savvy geniuses mingling around him, Langdon reminded himself that many of these young analytical minds were probably very antireligious, just like Edmond. Tonight’s audience was not exactly the “home crowd” for a professor of religious symbology.
CHAPTER 4
ConspiracyNet.com
BREAKING NEWS
Update: ConspiracyNet’s “Top 10 Media Stories of the Day” can be viewed by clicking here. Also, we have a brand-new story just now breaking!
EDMOND KIRSCH SURPRISE ANNOUNCEMENT?
Tech titans have flooded Bilbao, Spain, this evening to attend a VIP event hosted by futurist Edmond Kirsch at the Guggenheim Museum. Security is extremely tight, and guests have not been told the purpose of the event, but ConspiracyNet has received a tip from an inside source suggesting that Edmond Kirsch will be speaking shortly and is planning to surprise his guests with a major scientific announcement. ConspiracyNet will continue to monitor this story and deliver news as we receive it.
CHAPTER 5
THE LARGEST SYNAGOGUE in Europe is located in Budapest on Dohány Street. Built in the Moorish style with massive twin spires, the shrine has seats for more than three thousand worshippers—with downstairs pews for the men and balcony benches for the women.
Outside in the garden, in a mass burial pit, are interred the bodies of hundreds of Hungarian Jews who died during the horrors of the Nazi occupation. The site is marked by a Tree of Life—a metal sculpture depicting a weeping willow whose leaves are each inscribed with the name of a victim. When a breeze blows, the metal leaves rattle against one another, clattering with an eerie echo above the hallowed ground.
For more than three decades, the spiritual leader of the Great Synagogue had been the eminent Talmudic scholar and Kabbalist—Rabbi Yehuda Köves—who, despite his advancing years and poor health, remained an active member of the Jewish community both in Hungary and around the world.
As the sun set across the Danube, Rabbi Köves exited the synagogue. He made his way past the boutiques and mysterious “ruin bars” of Dohány Street en route to his home on Marcius 15 Square, a stone’s throw from Elisabeth Bridge, which linked the ancient cities of Buda and Pest, which were formally united in 1873.
The Passover holidays were fast approaching—normally one of Köves’s most joyous times of the year—and yet, ever since his return last week from the Parliament of the World’s Religions, he had been feeling only a bottomless disquiet.
I wish I had never attended.
The extraordinary meeting with Bishop Valdespino, Allamah Syed al-Fadl, and futurist Edmond Kirsch had plagued Köves’s thoughts for three full days.
Now, as Köves arrived home, he strode directly to his courtyard garden and unlocked his házikó—the small cottage that served as his private sanctuary and study.
The cottage was a single room with high bookshelves that sagged under the weight of religious tomes. Köves strode to his desk and sat down, frowning at the mess before him.