What is the origin of human beings?
Where do we come from? Where are we going?
Did humans create God from the kaleidoscope of their imagination, or is there actually a God who is behind the origination of human beings, someone who consciously created humans?
And if there is one, then, can this God, can this great intelligence survive the technology that human beings are progressing towards, as rapidly as the speed of light? A technology, which seems to have a penultimate power over a human’s life, and perhaps even over their death too…
Through this novel, Mr. Brown, here drives a wedge between the ideas of creationism [or creation science], and spontaneous evolution that can be clearly explained using the concepts of science and technology.
Did an entity create this universe, as suggested by all religions, or did the universe spontaneously created itself, triggered by one scientific process after the other?
Do humans require to see something or someone as the source of their origin, or is it possible to elaborate the process of human evolution in terms of a summation of various other processes like that of chemical reactions, volcanic eruptions, star explosions, nucleotide multiplication, microorganism activity, so forth and so on…
Religion and science. Science and spirituality. Are these two ideas at conflicting loggerheads with one another, or are they leading to a realization that is, but only, one and the same?
ORIGIN by Dan Brown is a mystery thriller, mushrooming from the deep-rooted connection that lies between science and spirituality; and centered around the themes of mystery, suspense, science, technology, AI, past & future, religion and spirituality.
Robert Langdon, the signature character of Dan Brown, appears in the storyline as a professor of symbology. One day, he is invited to attend an event organized by one of his early Harvard student named Edmond Kirsch. Edmond, who is a forty-year old billionaire is a brilliant scientist and a great connoisseur of modern art, with several discoveries, both patented & secret, starring along his name, and a knack for doing things ‘a different way, his own way’.
Edmond seems to have made a discovery, that he believes, is going to drastically transform the picture of the world’s consciousness, shattering the ground of all the religion and elevating it to a fresh perspective for the people the world over, a point of view to gain insight into the understanding of concepts like God, universe, humans, technology and destiny.
And in this event, which has been organized at the venue of Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum, meticulously orchestrated for attendees with mind-blowing, futuristic AI technologies, worldwide LIVE streaming and finest details drawing down to the brass tacks, Edmond is going to announce these outstanding discoveries.
Discoveries, which are mainly related to human origin and human destiny…
People in the audience are welcomed with provisions of one-of-a-kind headsets, directly connected to a humanoid who introduces and voices itself in their ears by the name of ‘Winston’.
However, not only this noteworthy event is disrupted to a sudden thumping halt, but also, stuns the millions of viewers worldwide with a terrible disappointment that Edmond’s discovery may never be revealed and may remain a secret forever. A former navy officer named Luis Avila, who has been hired by someone called as ‘The Regent’, shots Edmond dead, almost enigmatically, while he is delivering his speech on the stage and just before the moment when he is about to showcase the presentation containing the content of his ground-breaking discovery.
Apparently, no one knows anything about Edmond’s discoveries except for Edmond himself and three priests he had met earlier at the Parliament of World Religions – two of whom already murdered by someone secret.
To find and preserve his discovery, Professor Robert flees away from the museum along with the museum director Ambra Vidal, who is also the future queen of Spain.
Robert and Ambra, fly away from the museum to the city of Barcelona, where Edmond’s house is located. At every step, they are helped and guided by Winston, who is not only a mere gadget, but a state-of-the-art humanoid supercomputer designed personally by Edmond. Winston not only helps them escape the tight security of the museum, but also books a boat and helicopter for them. Winston was programmed by Edmond to do these tasks on an automated basis.
Upon arrival in Barcelona, a series of clues and facts are unfolded into Robert’s attention, including that Edmond, while living, had been suffering from cancer. Followed by the speech left unfinished by Edmond, the clues lead them to a trail that ends at Sagrada Familia, which is Spain’s famous, partially-constructed, unfinished church located in the city. Inside the church, Robert and Ambra come across a rare volume of William Blake’s poetry collection donated to the church by Edmond.
Joining all the dots together and picturing a cohesive view of the cluster of Edmond’s clues, the next and the last place they reach is Barcelona Supercomputing Center, which was also Edmond’s personal computer laboratory. Arriving inside this AI-powered laboratory and entering the passcode in Edmond’s personal computer, they are able to retrieve and broadcast Edmond’s recorded presentation to the worldwide audience.
The novel wraps up with a startling conclusion, wherein, Robert discovers that ‘The Regent’ was none other than the supercomputer humanoid Winston. Oddly enough, Winston was instructed by Edmond to increase the public viewership of his speech to as big a number as possible, any way it was possible.
And Winston, what was Winston except merely for an intelligently-coded computer, programmed to execute the instructions inputted by its user. Its owner. So, since Edmond had instructed Winston to increase the audience number as big as possible, the humanoid supercomputer did exactly as it was instructed. It churned out a possibility that nothing would be more attention-catching than witnessing Edmond’s death on the stage itself, just before the discovery was revealed to the audience. And so, this humanoid supercomputer, innocent if we should call it, planned Edmond’s death to prove him a martyr in front of the world, and so, when Edmond was murdered on the stage, his speech left unfinished, the audience counter worldwide naturally exponentiated to millions and more millions. When Edmond’s speech discovered by Robert and Ambra was broadcasted worldwide, his viewership did indeed cross millions and millions!
The humanoid supercomputer did carry out the task as instructed and programmed into it, yet, Robert is left wondering whose goal it actually fulfilled, and who was the one who could be attributed to have done it? A machine or a human?
Ultimately, the novel leaves us with only one lesson,
Be careful what you wish for!
but wait, it also reminds us an evergreen code-ish insight,
No matter what you wish or create, everything that is created at any point in time, is inherently programmed to self-destruct itself in the end. What is born inevitably dies!
To sum it all up,
We may be humans,
but all of us live by some invisible humanoid-like code,
that seems to have been coded into the deepest neural recesses lurking inside our brains…
What is your brain’s code?
Think but don’t think.
Because, every code, ultimately, self-destructs itself, irrespective of who the coder is!
What matters all the better, are the things like beams of golden sunlight, the changing weather, the swinging breath, the pulsating heartbeat – things which lie far beyond the scope of this mechanical entity called as the brain…
What do you think?
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