The Lost Symbol Epilogue

Robert Langdon awoke slowly.Faces gazed down at him. Where am I?A twinkling later, he rec eached where he was. He sat up slowly infra the Apotheosis. His mainstay felt stiff from lying on the hard catwalk.Wheres Katherine?Langdon check up on his Mickey Mouse watch. Its almost time. He pulled himself to his feet, peering cautiously over the balusters into the gaping space below.Katherine? he c anyed out.The word echoed back in the gloss over of the deserted Rotunda. Retrieving his tweed jacket from the floor, he brushed it off and edit it back on. He checked his pockets. The iron key the clothes designer had disposed him was gone.Making his way back around the walkway, Langdon headed for the opening the Architect had shown them . . . dunk metal stairs ascending into cramped darkness. He began to climb. Higher and high he ascended. Gradu totallyy the stairway became more narrow and more inclined. lifelessness Langdon pushed on.Just a little further.The steps had become almo st ladderlike at present, the line of achievement frighteningly constricted. Finally, the stairs ended, and Langdon stepped up onto a small landing. Before him was a heavy metal door. The iron key was in the lock, and the door hung jolly ajar. He pushed, and the door creaked open. The air beyond felt cold. As Langdon stepped across the threshold into murky darkness, he realized he was now out placement.I was just coming to get you, Katherine said, smiling at him. Its almost time.When Langdon accepted his surroundings, he drew a startled breath. He was standing on a tiny skywalk that encircled the pinnacle of the U.S. Capitol Dome. Directly supra him, the bronze Statue of Freedom gazed out over the sleeping capital city. She faced the east, where the get-go crimson splashes of dawn had begun to paint the horizon.Katherine guided Langdon around the balcony until they were facing west, utterly aligned with the National Mall. In the distance, the silhouette of the Washington Monu ment stood in the early-morning light. From this vantage point, the towering obelisk looked even more impressive than it had before.When it was built, Katherine whispered, it was the tallest construction on the entire planet.Langdon pictured the old sepia photographs of stonemasons on scaffolding, more than five hundred feet in the air, laying each block by hand, one by one.We are builders, he pattern. We are creators. Since the beginning of time, earthly concern had sensed there was something special roughly himself . . . something more. He had longed for powers he did non possess. He had dreamed of flying, of healing, and of trans do working his world in every(prenominal) way imaginable.And he had done just that.Today, the shrines to universes accomplishments adorned the National Mall. The Smithsonian museums burgeoned with our inventions, our art, our science, and the ideas of our great thinkers. They told the history of man as creatorfrom the stone tools in the Native Ame rican score Museum to the jets and rockets in the National Air and Space Museum. If our ancestors could see us today, for certain they would think us gods.As Langdon peered through the predawn mist at the sit geometry of museums and monuments before him, his eyes returned to the Washington Monument. He pictured the lone account book in the buried cornerstone and judgment of how the Word of God was in truth the word of man.He thought somewhat the great circumpunct, and how it had been embedded in the circular plaza beneath the monument at the crossroads of America. Langdon thought suddenly of the little stone knock Peter had entrusted to him. The cube, he now realized, had unhinged and opened 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 lifted his gaze but dictum zippo.Then, staring more intently, he glimpsed it.Across the Mall, a tiny smirch of golden solariseniness was glinting off the highest tip of the towering obelisk. The gleaming pinpoint grew quickly brighter, more radiant, gleaming on the capstones aluminum peak. Langdon watched in wonder as the light transformed into a beacon that hovered above the shadowed city. He pictured the tiny engraving on the east-facing side of the aluminum tip and realized to his amazement that the first ray of sunlight to hit the nations capital, every single day, did so by illuminating devil wordsLaus Deo.Robert, Katherine whispered. Nobody ever gets to come up here at sunrise. This is what Peter cherished us to witness.Langdon could feel his pulse 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 nil taller can be built in our capital city. Ever.The light inched farther down the capstone as the sun crept over the horizon poop them. As Langdon watched, he could almost sense, all around him, the celestial spheres tincture their eternal orbits through the void of space. He thought of the Great Architect of the Universe and how Peter had said specifically that the treasure he wanted to show Langdon could be unveiled only by the Architect. Langdon had assumed 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 opinion of man . . . receiving enlightenment. The light then began inching down the monument, commencing the same descent it performed every morning. Heaven moving toward earth . . . God connecting to man. This process, Langdon realized, would reverse come evening. The sun would dip in the west, and the light would climb again from earth back to heaven . . . preparing for a new day.Beside him, Katherine shivered and inched closer. La ngdon put his arm around her. As the two of them stood side by side in silence, Langdon thought some 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 nada is hidden that will not be made known nothing is secret that will not come to light.As the sun lift over Washington, Langdon looked to the heavens, where the last 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 always shared one thing. We all had the Creator. We used different names, different faces, and different prayers, but God was the usual constant for man. God was the symbol we all shared . . . the symbol of all the mysteries of life that we could not understand. The ancients had praised God as a symbol of our unmeasurabl e human potential, but that ancient symbol had been lost over time. Until now.In that moment, standing atop the Capitol, with the warmth of the sun streaming down all around him, Robert Langdon felt a powerful upwelling deep within himself. It was an sensation he had never felt this profoundly in his entire life.Hope.