The Lost Symbol Epilogue

Robert Langdon awoke slowly.Faces gazed fix up polish at him. Where am I?A moment later, he rec solelyed where he was. He sat up slowly infra the Apotheosis. His back matt-up stiff from fraud on the hard catwalk.Wheres Katherine?Langdon checked his paddy field Mouse watch. Its close time. He pulled himself to his feet, peering conservatively over the banister into the gaping space below.Katherine? he called out.The word echoed back in the silence of the deserted Rotunda. Retrieving his tweed poll from the floor, he brushed it off and put it back on. He checked his pockets. The iron out key the Architect had given him was gone. fashioning his way back or so the walkway, Langdon headed for the curtain raising the Architect had shown them . . . steep coat st posts ascending into cramped darkness. He began to climb. high and higher he ascended. Gradually the staircase became to a hugeer extent narrow and more inclined. tacit Langdon pushed on.Just a little farther.The locomote had be coif almost ladderlike now, the passage scarily constricted. Finally, the stairs ended, and Langdon stepped up onto a smaller landing. Before him was a heavy metal verge. The iron key was in the lock, and the door hung slightly ajar. He pushed, and the door creaked open. The air beyond felt c old(a). As Langdon stepped across the threshold into murky darkness, he realised he was now out spatial relation.I was scarce coming to get you, Katherine said, smiling at him. Its almost time.When Langdon recognized his surroundings, he pull a startled breath. He was stand on a tiny skywalk that shape the pinnacle of the U.S. Capitol Dome. Directly above him, the bronzy Statue of Freedom gazed out over the sleeping crownwork city. She faced the east, where the first red splashes of dawn had begun to paint the view.Katherine guided Langdon around the balcony until they were facing west, perfectly aligned with the subject field Mall. In the distance, the silhouette of the Washington deposit stood in the early-morning light. From this vantage point, the high-flown sticker looked even more impressive than it had before.When it was built, Katherine whispered, it was the tallest organise on the entire planet.Langdon visualise the old sepia photographs of stonemasons on scaffolding, more than louvre hundred feet in the air, laying apiece block by hand, one by one.We are builders, he melodic theme. We are creators. Since the root word of time, man had sensed there was something peculiar(a) about himself . . . something more. He had longed for powers he did non possess. He had dreamed of flying, of healing, and of transforming his world in e truly way imaginable.And he had do just that.Today, the shrines to mans accomplishments adorned the National Mall. The Smithsonian museums burgeoned with our inventions, our art, our science, and the ideas of our bang-up thinkers. They told the history of man as creatorfrom the stone tools in the N ative Ameri sack History Museum to the jets and rockets in the National railway line and Space Museum. If our ancestors could see us today, for certain they would think us gods.As Langdon peered through with(predicate) the predawn mist at the sprawling geometry of museums and deposits before him, his eyes returned to the Washington Monument. He pictured the lone Bible in the hide cornerstone and survey of how the Word of matinee idol was really the word of man.He position about the great circumpunct, and how it had been embedded in the circular plaza beneath the monument at the crossroads of America. Langdon judgement all of a sudden of the little stone recess woodpecker had entrusted to him. The cube, he now realized, had unhinged and assailable to form the same exact geometrical forma cross with a circumpunct at its center. Langdon had to laugh. Even that little box was hinting at this crossroads.Robert, look Katherine pointed to the top of the monument.Langdon eleva te his gaze nevertheless saw nothing.Then, gaze more intently, he glimpsed it.Across the Mall, a tiny speck of golden cheerfulness was glinting off the highest principal of the towering obelisk. The shining pinpoint grew quickly brighter, more radiant, gleaming on the stretchers aluminum peak. Langdon watched in wonder as the light modify into a beacon that hovered above the wispy city. He pictured the tiny inscribe on the east-facing side of the aluminum tip and realized to his amazement that the first shaft of sunlight to hit the nations capital, every wiz day, did so by illuminating both wordsLaus Deo.Robert, Katherine whispered. Nobody ever gets to come up here at sunrise. This is what dickhead wanted us to witness.Langdon could feel his twinkling quickening as the glow atop the monument intensified.He said he believes this is why the forefathers built the monument so tall. I dont know if thats true, but I do know thistheres a very old law decreeing that nothing ta ller can be built in our capital city. Ever.The light inched farther down the capstone as the sun crept over the horizon behind them. As Langdon watched, he could almost sense, all around him, the celestial spheres study their eternal orbits through the void of space. He thought of the Great Architect of the origination and how Peter had said specifically that the see he wanted to show Langdon could be unveiled only by the Architect. Langdon had put on this meant Warren Bellamy. Wrong Architect.As the rays of sunlight strengthened, the golden glow engulfed the entirety of the thirty-three- hundred-pound capstone. The judgment of man . . . receiving enlightenment. The light then began inching down the monument, commencing the same descent it performed every morning. nirvana moving toward humanity . . . divinity connecting to man. This process, Langdon realized, would move up come evening. The sun would dip in the west, and the light would climb again from earth back to heave n . . . preparing for a refreshful day.Beside him, Katherine shivered and inched closer. Langdon put his arm around her. As the two of them stood side by side in silence, Langdon thought about all he had learned tonight. He thought of Katherines belief that everything was about to change. He thought of Peters faith that an age of enlightenment was imminent. And he thought of the words of a great prophet who had boldly declared nil is hidden that will not be made known nothing is orphic that will not come to light.As the sun rose over Washington, Langdon looked to the heavens, where the choke of the nighttime stars were fading out. He thought about science, about faith, about man. He thought about how every culture, in every country, in every time, had ever shared one thing. We all had the Creator. We use different names, different faces, and different prayers, but perfection was the universal constant for man. God was the image we all shared . . . the image of all the myster ies of life that we could not understand. The ancients had praised God as a symbol of our measureless human potential, but that ancient symbol had been lost over time. Until now.In that moment, stand atop the Capitol, with the warmth of the sun cyclosis down all around him, Robert Langdon felt a powerful upwelling deep at heart himself. It was an emotion he had never felt this profoundly in his entire life.Hope.