Page 162 of The Secret of Secrets

Although Langdon was still unclear on this technology’s link to human consciousness and Katherine’s work, he had no doubt that brain chips would have critical implications for military intelligence—drones piloted by the mind, telepathic battlefield communication, endless applications for data analysis—so it made perfect sense that the CIA would be investing heavily.

Human-to-machine interface is the future.

Langdon recalled what he had witnessed at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, where modeling software was predicting the future evolution of the human race: Humans will merge with another quickly evolving species…technology.

“Okay, so the key question is, where does this intersect with your manuscript?” Langdon pressed, eager to find the connection. “Did you write about computer chips?”

“A little bit,” she said, visibly frustrated, “but it’s nothing that could be of any interest or threat to this program.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. My only mention of brain implants was in the final chapter, and it was more of a theoretical narrative musing about the future of noetic science.”

Noetics Tomorrow, Langdon thought, having glimpsed her chapter index before adding it to the fire in the library. “And brain implants played a role in that chapter?” he urged, sensing they might be close.

“Hypothetical implants, yes,” she said. “Implants we won’t have for decades…if ever.”

Langdon had once heard that the technology available to the intelligence community was years beyond what was known publicly. “Katherine, is it possible that the CIA is further along than you imagine?”

“It’s possible, but not that much further,” she said. “What I wrote about is more of a thought experiment, rather than a plausible technology. Think of Maxwell’s demon or the twin paradox—obviously you can’t invent a molecule-sorting demon or propel twins to the speed of light, but imagining it is helpful in understanding the bigger picture.”

I’ll take your word for it, he thought. “Tell me what you wrote.”

Katherine sighed. “It was a fantasy relating to my discoveries about GABA. Remember we talked about the brain being a receiver…a kind of radio that receives signals from all around us—from the universe?”

Langdon nodded. “And the brain chemical GABA functions like the radio dial…filtering out unwanted frequencies and limiting the amount of information and consciousness that flows in.”

“Precisely,” she said. “So I hypothesized that one day, in the distant future, we would figure out how to build an implant that could regulate GABA levels in the brain—essentially lowering our filters on demand…so we could experience more of reality.”

“Incredible,” Langdon said. The mere thought of it was thrilling. “And that’s not possible?”

“God, no!” she said, shaking her head. “The most advanced noetic science is not even in that ballpark yet. In the first place, we would have to be correct about the noetic theory of a Universal Consciousness or the Akashic Field or Anima Mundi—or whatever you want to call the field of consciousness that is theorized to surround all things.”

“Which you believe.”

“I do. We can’t yet prove this cosmic realm exists, but it seems to be regularly glimpsed by minds in altered states. Unfortunately, these experiences are fleeting, uncontrolled, subjective, and often nonrepeatable—making them suspect scientifically.”

“And easy targets for skeptics.”

“Yes. We have no quantifiable method, machine, or technology capable of receiving signals from the cosmic realm. Only the brain can do that.” She gave a casual shrug. “And so I proposed a hypothetical chip that could piggyback on a brain, lower its GABA levels, widen its bandwidth, and turn it into a far more powerful receiver.”

Langdon stared at her in awe. Not only was Katherine’s idea indisputably brilliant, it might finally explain exactly why the CIA was panicked about her manuscript.

What if Katherine was about to publish a book that described an ultrasecret chip the CIA is already building?!

“Katherine,” he said, “Threshold is taking consciousness study to the next dimension, and your book might have been about to blow the lid off the centerpiece of their secret technology.”

“There’s no chance of that,” she said. “Like I said, the chip I described is not buildable. It’s interesting conceptually, but strictly hypothetical. The technical barriers to its construction are immovable—specifically this: regulating system-wide levels of a neurotransmitter would require complete physical integration with the brain’s neural network…and the brain has over a hundred trillion synapses to monitor.”

“But scientific progress is accel—”

“Robert, believe me, complete physical integration is unachievable. It would be the equivalent of directly wiring every single lightbulb on earth to one switch, a million times over. It’s genuinely impossible.”

“So was splitting the atom…” Langdon retorted. “But science has a way of figuring things out, especially with unlimited budgets. Remember the Manhattan Project?”

“Huge difference…Nuclear technology already existed in 1940. Uranium existed. Scientists just pulled it all together. The chip I proposed requires technology and materials that don’t even exist on earth. Before we can even talk about integrating with the brain’s dendritic tree, someone has to invent a nanoelectric biofilament.”

“A nanoelectric what?”