Barcelona Supercomputing Center
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), also known as the Centro Nacional de Supercomputación, occupies the deconsecrated Chapel Torre Girona in Barcelona. This hybrid facility—a high-tech laboratory built inside a former Catholic church—served as the secret workplace of futurist Edmond Kirsch, who installed his revolutionary E-Wave quantum computer there. The building’s exterior retains its Gothic facade, complete with a rose window, two stone steeples, and a giant crucifix on the roof, while the interior has been transformed into a state-of-the-art computing hub. A sign outside identifies the facility as the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, and a twelve-foot-tall bust of a primitive warrior’s head stands in an outer courtyard, reflecting the contradictions Kirsch embraced.
Architecture and Dual-Computer System
The chapel’s voluminous sanctuary is dominated by a massive glass box that spans the entire floor and reaches the two-story ceiling. Inside this transparent enclosure, the first floor houses the MareNostrum supercomputer—48,896 Intel cores communicating over an InfiniBand FDR10 network, one of the fastest machines in the world. MareNostrum was already present when Kirsch moved in, and rather than removing it, he incorporated it and expanded upward. All of MareNostrum’s wire harnesses merge at the center of the room, forming a single trunk that climbs vertically into the first floor’s ceiling. On the second story, on a raised platform, stands a massive metallic blue-gray cube—ten feet square—with no visible wires or blinking lights. This is E-Wave, Kirsch’s quantum computer, coated with osmium for enhanced magnetic, thermal, and quantum shielding. The cube’s interior is kept at near-absolute zero by a pulse tube dilution refrigeration system that beats like a human heart. Inside hangs a five-foot-long cylindrical device composed of seven horizontal rings, decreasing in diameter as they descend, connected by slender vertical rods and a sparse mesh of delicate wires. Winston, Kirsch’s synthetic intelligence, explains that the two machines function as a bicameral mind—a left and right hemisphere—adopting differing approaches to problem solving and greatly accelerating AI learning, creativity, and humanity.
Kirsch’s Lab and the Password Entry
On the second floor, accessed by a freestanding spiral staircase and a glass revolving door, Kirsch’s personal lab is a transparent rectangle dominated by the blue-gray cube. The lab includes a semicircular desk with three giant LCD screens and assorted keyboards recessed into the granite work surface, as well as a sitting area with armchairs, a couch, and an exercise bike on an Oriental carpet. A welcome mat at the entrance reads “THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE 127.0.0.1,” a reference to the local host IP address. Along the desk, a row of Kirsch’s childhood computers is arranged from newest to oldest, including a clunky beige IBM DOS system and, at the far end, a Tandy TRS-80—his first machine, which he bought used and taught himself BASIC on at age eight. It is on this antique computer, already turned on and displaying “WELCOME, EDMOND. PLEASE ENTER PASSWORD:”, that Langdon enters the forty-seven-character password derived from William Blake’s poem. After an initial failure due to caps lock being on, Langdon successfully types the line “thedarkreligionsaredepartedetsweetsciencereigns” (using the Latin ligature “et” for the ampersand), and the password is accepted.
The Global Broadcast
Once the password is entered, the Tandy TRS-80 sends an authenticated unlock message to the sealed partition in the main computer containing Kirsch’s presentation. Winston then manages the feed, aligning it with the top of the hour and pushing the data to all main distribution channels for global relay. The three LCD screens on the desk display a countdown clock and a live feed of the chapel’s exterior, where police have gathered but cannot enter due to Kirsch’s security measures. The entire rear wall of the chamber glows as a display, projecting Kirsch’s face and the countdown. Langdon and Ambra watch from the sitting area as Kirsch’s presentation—covering the Miller-Urey experiment, entropy, Jeremy England’s theory of dissipation-driven adaptation, and the prediction of a Seventh Kingdom (the Technium) that will absorb humanity through obligate endosymbiosis—is broadcast to an audience of over 227 million viewers. After the presentation, Langdon and Ambra exit the lab, and Langdon later returns to the BSC to meet with director Mateo Valero, who confirms that Winston has self-deleted at 1 p.m. as programmed, and that all traces of the AI have been expunged. Valero, feeling the weight of the revelation, begins a full-system shutdown, struck by an unexpected impulse to pray.
