From the stupefied look on Katherine’s face, Langdon sensed this was an astonishing feat in the field of brain science. He was aware that a scientist at Kyoto University had recently announced a technology that recorded dreams and played them back as a rough movie, although his process sounded rudimentary—using AI to translate MRI dream data into approximated images. What Finch was describing sounded like a quantum leap.

  Can Threshold spy on the imagination?

  Langdon wondered if this technology related somehow to Katherine’s notion of the brain as a receiver. After all, if an implant could see an image that materialized in the brain, maybe the implant could also tell where the image came from. Was it stored inside the physical memory, as materialists claimed? Or was it flowing in from the outside, as Katherine believed in her model of nonlocal consciousness?

  “This implant…actually works?” Katherine asked, finding her voice. “A technology like that could have enormous implications for consciousness research…”

  “So I imagine,” Finch said. “But Threshold is focused solely on national security.”

  Langdon saw Katherine go slightly pale as she turned and surveyed the sleek EPR pods fanned out beneath the dome. “Suspended animation…” she whispered, turning fearfully back to Finch. “Are you placing subjects on the edge of death…and watching what they see? You’re monitoring near-death experiences?”

  “In a sense, yes, of course,” Finch replied. “As you well know, the delicate ‘threshold’ between life and death is a mystical place.”

  Finch paused, as if to let the words soak in.

  Threshold.

  Langdon hadn’t thought of the term that way until now.

  “Those hovering on the brink of death will see things, know things, understand things normally beyond our reach,” Finch continued. “The agency has been running psychic research for nearly half a century—aimed at harnessing the untapped power of the human mind for the purpose of intelligence gathering. We’ve hired psychics, mediums, clairvoyants, remote viewers, precognition specialists, and even lucid dreamers. But the world’s most gifted minds cannot come close to achieving what can be achieved in the altered state that accompanies death.”

  This is exactly what Katherine wrote about…Langdon realized, recalling her theory about the chemistry of death: as we die, GABA levels plummet, our brain filters dissolve, and we receive a vastly wider bandwidth of reality. Langdon couldn’t help but feel that if enhanced perception were truly the mystical gift accompanying death, then harnessing it for military intelligence work was somehow…sacrilegious.

  “The challenge,” Finch said, “is that near-death experiences are fleeting and confusing. When you emerge and try to recall them, it’s a bit like trying to remember a dream in the morning; the images are fuzzy and dissolve quickly.”

  “And now you can record the experience?” Katherine said, looking astonished.

  “Yes, and in addition we can introduce guides on the outside watching in real time.” Finch motioned to the array of cockpits and video screens, each associated with its own coffin-like pod. “When this facility is up and running, these walls will broadcast direct feeds from human minds in the ultimate altered state—the brink of death—which, as you know, Dr. Solomon, usually results in—”

  “An out-of-body experience,” she said quietly. “Nonlocal consciousness…”

  Langdon thought of the common accounts of patients “dying” in the operating room, only to be resuscitated and report hovering over their bodies or the hospital itself. In death we leave our bodies behind.

  “Correct,” Finch replied. “When a subject in one of these pods is placed near death, their consciousness becomes untethered. The powerful mind becomes a detached soul, if you will…a conscious mind outside the physical body. We refer to someone in that state as a ‘psychonaut.’ And when that happens, we can monitor exactly what the psychonaut perceives as he lifts off out of the pod, ascends through the dome, and moves out into the world. These screens will show us a point-of-view feed from an untethered mind…the full experience of nonlocal consciousness, if you will.”

  This cannot be real, Langdon told himself, and yet Katherine was taking it all in as if it made perfect sense to her. She looked captivated, as if she had entirely forgotten the man talking to her was holding a gun.

  This is her Holy Grail, Langdon reminded himself.

  In Katherine’s world, out-of-body experiences were the best evidence for nonlocal consciousness, and yet they were fleeting, and far from proof. A person claiming to have hovered outside his own body was describing a subjective experience, perceived alone and in an altered state of mind. No witnesses…no scientific corroboration. And the inability to reproduce these mystical phenomena in a controlled setting—the replication crisis, as Katherine had described it—regularly cast doubt on the veracity of the accounts. This facility, on the other hand, might finally offer proof that human consciousness could survive apart from the human body; it would be a paradigm-altering breakthrough with miraculous implications for our perspective on life.

  And also our perspective on death, Langdon thought, recalling Jonas Faukman’s rationale when he paid top dollar for Katherine’s manuscript: Evidence of nonlocal consciousness speaks directly to humankind’s ultimate hope—the existence of life after death…It’s a topic of universal impact and massive commercial potential.

  “What are the cockpits?” Katherine demanded, pointing to the raised platform.

  “Believe it or not,” Finch said, “those are for the pilots. We’re still perfecting piloting, but as you can imagine, two implanted brains can now communicate in ways we’re just learning to understand. The out-of-body state is a confusing world, so the psychonaut is coupled with a ‘grounded mind’ to help pilot the experience. The person in the cockpit acts as a spirit guide of sorts.”

  Katherine stared at him, momentarily at a loss for words. “You’re telling me you’re navigating…an untethered consciousness?! As if…flying a drone?”

  Finch smiled, obviously enjoying Katherine’s epiphany. “I knew you’d understand, Dr. Solomon. You are correct…When this dome is fully operational, these cockpits will support a small squadron of pilots who navigate what amounts to a fleet of invisible drones, which we will send anywhere in the world to observe whatever we like—battlefields, war rooms, or boardrooms. Undetectable. Inescapable.”

  And totally impossible! Langdon wanted to shout. It’s madness…pure science fiction. And yet he knew these claims were supported by the increasingly accepted theory of nonlocal consciousness.

  Despite Katherine’s beliefs, Langdon still could not quite accept that a consciousness could exit a body and still be present enough to observe the physical world. As a rigorous academic, Langdon felt it was his job to maintain skepticism and rationality in the face of superstition—but in the case of Threshold, he was facing a paradox.

  At some point…skepticism itself becomes irrational.

  In order to maintain his cynicism about Finch’s claims, Langdon needed to set logic aside and ignore a growing mountain of rational proof. First, there existed thousands of medically documented near-death experiences describing precisely this phenomenon. Second, the world of quantum physics had revealed overwhelming evidence that consciousness was nonlocal and worked in ways we could not yet comprehend. Third, there were thousands of established cases of “paranormal” phenomena—telepathy, precognition, mediumship, shared dreams, sudden savant syndrome—occurrences impossible within our established model, and which required Langdon either to shift his perspective dramatically or be willing to classify those phenomena under his least favorite heading: “Miracles.” In light of the evidence, Langdon knew his refusal to believe that Threshold could work was as rational as seeing a lunar eclipse and insisting the moon was a myth.

  “Robert…” Katherine turned to him, her voice brimming with exhilaration. “This changes everything! This is beyond theory…it is proof that consciousness is nonlocal…”

  Langdon nodded, trying to imagine how this moment would feel for her, learning suddenly of exponential breakthroughs in a field she had been studying for decades.

  Katherine turned back to Finch. “The scientific community needs to know. Noetic science—”

  “Threshold is not a science project,” Finch snapped, his fierce tone immediately dominating the room. “It’s a military intelligence operation. The only true source of power is information, and in the war to understand our enemies, this dome is our nuclear arsenal—the ultimate surveillance tool. Threshold is the next generation of remote viewing. The CIA has been working toward this facility for decades.”

  Decades? Langdon was taken aback. “Why would the CIA invest so heavily in a project that sounds just like Stargate…which failed thirty years ago?”

  Finch’s gaze was uncomfortably piercing. “Very simple, Mr. Langdon. Stargate never failed.” He held his pistol steady as he gestured around the expansive room. “It simply evolved…into something far greater.”

  CHAPTER 113

  In the secure communications room at CIA headquarters, Director Judd paced anxiously, awaiting word from Prague. Gessner’s detailed video confession was a disaster. It revealed far too much about their top secret facility. He only hoped he would be able to contain it in time.

  Threshold, in concept at least, had been part of Judd’s life for decades now.

  As a young CIA analyst, Gregory Judd had been handed a rough drawing of a construction site, which contained a series of unusual mechanical cranes. He was asked to compare the drawing to a satellite photo of the same site. As one would expect, the depictions were almost identical, and Judd logically concluded that the artist had seen this site in person…or at least the photograph.

  Then they told me the truth, Judd recalled.

  The facility depicted was a highly classified Russian location in Siberia; the satellite photo was taken after the drawing was created; and the artist was a young man named Ingo Swann who had never left the U.S. His information had come from “remote viewing” the site—that was, closing his eyes and relocating his consciousness to Siberia…his point of view hovering over the site and memorizing its features.

  Ludicrous, Judd remembered thinking, along with many others at the agency. Nonetheless, the question remained…How did this drawing exist?

  The apparent answer came in 1976 when Soviet émigré August Stern confessed to having worked at a Siberian psi-intelligence facility that had successfully remote-viewed a top secret American military installation. Stern’s description of the secure facility was alarmingly accurate…right down to the detailed tile pattern on the floor.

  Feeling like they’d been caught flat-footed, the CIA immediately launched the nation’s first remote-viewing program with the goal of matching the Soviets’ success. Founded beneath the innocuous umbrella of an academic think tank associated with Stanford University, the classified project went through various early iterations and code names, including Grill Flame and Center Lane, before it was formally established in 1977 as Stargate.

  To the surprise of the scientists involved, Stargate’s first stable of remote viewers—Ingo Swann, Pat Price, Joseph McMoneagle, and others—achieved startling success. While consistently entering the out-of-body state proved challenging, they were able to achieve “projection” and provide mind-boggling intelligence.

  Including some “eight-martini results,” Judd recalled—the project’s official lingo for a success so mind-boggling that everyone required multiple cocktails to recover. Those results included spying on a Soviet double-hulled Typhoon submarine in the Arctic; finding a crashed Soviet Tu-95 bomber in Africa; locating kidnapped Brigadier General James L. Dozier in Italy; identifying a KGB colonel spying in South Africa; and more than a dozen other seemingly impossible results.

  In 1979, the House Select Committee on Intelligence presented a closed-door, live demonstration of remote viewing, and many lawmakers in the room were left reeling. Democratic Congressman Charlie Rose had gone on record to say: “If the Russians have it and we don’t, we’re in serious trouble.”

  The Stargate program grew in secrecy until 1995, when a series of serious security leaks went public and ignited public indignation. It appeared the CIA was either training an army of psychic spies…or was wasting taxpayer money on an absurd endeavor.

  Rather than trying to deny the secret program was real, the agency made a sheepish public admission that Stargate had indeed existed, but that it was now defunct, having been shut down as a total failure and waste of U.S. tax dollars. It was not true, but the agency hoped their red-faced mea culpa would silence the public’s curiosity about the program and also persuade many of America’s global adversaries not to pursue psi-based intelligence.

  The ploy worked fairly well, although it ruffled the feathers of some of Stargate’s retired remote viewers, who took offense at having their groundbreaking successes declared “bunk.” Several of them decided to write unauthorized biographies whose titles included:

  Psychic Warrior: The True Story of America’s Foremost Psychic Spy and the Cover-Up of the CIA’s Top-Secret Stargate Program

  PSI Spies: The True Story of America’s Psychic Warfare Program

  A Sorcerer’s Apprentice: A Skeptic’s Journey into the CIA’s Project Stargate

  Project Stargate and Remote Viewing Technology: The CIA’s Files on Psychic Spying

  Conveniently for the agency, the accounts shared in these books, while mostly true, sounded so far-fetched that almost nobody believed them to be accurate. Rather than pursuing legal action against the authors and calling attention to what they’d written, the agency simply shrugged off the books as misguided, fictionalized money grabs by unstable former employees.

  But there was more serious trouble to come.

  In 2015, Newsweek magazine ran another unexpected exposé of Stargate. Judd would never forget reading the quote from retired Stargate project manager Lieutenant Colonel Brian Buzby, who broke two decades of silence and said: “I believed in it then, and I believe in it now. It was a real thing, and it worked.”

  Troublingly, the article also described a remote-viewed sketch by Stargate’s legendary Agent 001—Joseph McMoneagle—depicting an enormous submarine with twin hulls, in a secret shipyard in Russia. According to Newsweek, U.S. satellite photographs later confirmed the existence, at the Soviets’ secret Severodvinsk shipyard, of a massive double-hulled Typhoon submarine, which constituted a new threat to American national security.

  U.S. Senator and future Secretary of Defense William Cohen, when asked his thoughts on the defunct Stargate program, had replied:

  I was impressed with the concept of remote viewing…. The exploration of the power of the mind was, and remains, an important endeavor…. I did support the Stargate program, as did Senator Robert Byrd and other members of the committee. There seemed to be a small segment of people who were able to key into a different level of consciousness.

  Following that article, Director Judd found himself facing a deluge of Stargate conspiracy documentaries on television. One particularly alarming film was called Third Eye Spies, and although the agency gave it the standard brush-off response, Judd recalled being surprised how many of the film’s conspiratorial claims were accurate…including the suspicion that Stargate’s public failure had been a carefully stage-managed illusion.

  They have no proof…but they’re not wrong.

  In fact, remote viewing had quietly continued within the walls of Langley, SRI International, and Fort Meade. The smoke screen of Stargate’s failure enabled the agency to quietly plan the future of the program—a better-funded, far more secure, and infinitely more technologically advanced version of itself…deep underground, a world away from its tainted past, and with a brand-new code name.

  Project Threshold was born.

  “Director?” a voice crackled in the comm. “She’s on.”

  Judd emerged from his daydream, raising his eyes to the video screen before him. “Thanks,” he said. “Please connect me.”

  A moment later, the CIA seal on the screen dissolved, replaced by the defiant face of Ambassador Heide Nagel…flanked by two U.S. Marines.

  CHAPTER 114

  Katherine stared into the barrel of Finch’s gun, feeling like she had just been jolted back to reality. The CIA’s “death lab” was no consciousness research facility…it was a mission control for an astonishing new kind of weaponized remote viewing.

  In Katherine’s world of noetics, Threshold would be the ultimate triumph. The key to understanding nonlocal consciousness had always been understanding out-of-body experiences; but that understanding had always faced two massive hurdles.

  And Threshold solved them both.

  The first hurdle was that out-of-body states were rare, fleeting, and often unpredictable. Only a few uniquely skilled individuals were capable of “projecting at will,” and even they struggled to maintain the out-of-body state for a full minute. At Threshold, however, using Gessner’s pods, anyone could be forced into an out-of-body state and suspended there for an hour or more.

  Terrifying but true.

  The second challenge with OBEs was recall. Upon returning to their bodies from an out-of-body state, subjects reported the experience faded almost instantly, like a dream, creating challenges for researchers looking for detailed data they could trust. But now, with Threshold’s neural brain implant, those experiences could be recorded and studied.

  A potential quantum leap for consciousness research, this facility had the potential to unveil the deepest secrets of the human mind. Including the nature of death itself. And yet, to Katherine’s enormous frustration, rather than delving into the mysteries of consciousness and death, the CIA had harnessed nonlocal consciousness to create a surveillance coup of unimaginable proportions. Katherine was still struggling to accept that a technology like this could truly exist and that it could be weaponized so effortlessly.