The Lost Symbol

Horrifying images of Robert’s death continued to swirl through her mind, along with thoughts of her brother. Is Peter dead, too? The strange knife on the nearby table kept bringing flashes of what might lie in store for her as well.

Is this really the end?

Oddly, her thoughts turned abruptly to her research. to Noetic Science. and to her recent breakthroughs. All of it lost. up in smoke. She would never be able to share with the world everything she had learned. Her most shocking discovery had taken place only a few months ago, and the results had the potential to redefine the way humans thought about death. Strangely, thinking now of that experiment. was bringing her an unexpected solace.

As a young girl, Katherine Solomon had often wondered if there was life after death. Does heaven exist? What happens when we die? As she grew older, her studies in science quickly erased any fanciful notions of heaven, hell, or the afterlife. The concept of “life after death,” she came to accept, was a human construct. a fairy tale designed to soften the horrifying truth that was our mortality.

Or so I believed.

A year ago, Katherine and her brother had been discussing one of philosophy’s most enduring questions — the existence of the human soul — specifically the issue of whether or not humans possessed some kind of consciousness capable of survival outside of the body.

They both sensed that such a human soul probably did exist. Most ancient philosophies concurred. Buddhist and Brahminical wisdom endorsed metempsychosis — the transmigration of the soul into a new body after death; Platonists defined the body as a “prison” from which the soul escaped; and the Stoics called the soul apospasma tou theu — “a particle of God” — and believed it was recalled by God upon death.

The existence of the human soul, Katherine noted with some frustration, was probably a concept that would never be scientifically proven. Confirming that a consciousness survived outside the human body after death was akin to exhaling a puff of smoke and hoping to find it years later.

After their discussion, Katherine had a strange notion. Her brother had mentioned the Book of Genesis and its description of the soul as Neshemah — a kind of spiritual “intelligence” that was separate from the body. It occurred to Katherine that the word intelligence suggested the presence of thought. Noetic Science clearly suggested that thoughts had mass, and so it stood to reason, then, that the human soul might therefore also have mass.

Can I weigh a human soul?

The notion was impossible, of course. foolish even to ponder.

It was three days later that Katherine suddenly woke up from a dead sleep and sat bolt upright in bed. She jumped up, drove to her lab, and immediately began work designing an experiment that was both startlingly simple. and frighteningly bold.

She had no idea if it would work, and she decided not to tell Peter about her idea until her work was complete. It took four months, but finally Katherine brought her brother into the lab. She wheeled out a large piece of gear that she had been keeping hidden in the back storage room.

“I designed and built it myself,” she said, showing Peter her invention. “Any guesses?”

Her brother stared at the strange machine. “An incubator?”

Katherine laughed and shook her head, although it was a reasonable guess. The machine did look a bit like the transparent incubators for premature babies one saw in hospitals. This machine, however, was adult size — a long, airtight, clear plastic capsule, like some kind of futuristic sleeping pod. It sat atop a large piece of electronic gear.

“See if this helps you guess,” Katherine said, plugging the contraption into a power source. A digital display lit up on the machine, its numbers jumping around as she carefully calibrated some dials.

When she was done, the display read:

0.0000000000 kg

“A scale?” Peter asked, looking puzzled.

“Not just any scale.” Katherine took a tiny scrap of paper off a nearby counter and laid it gently on top of the capsule. The numbers on the display jumped around again and then settled on a new reading.

0008194325 kg

“High-precision microbalance,” she said. “Resolution down to a few micrograms.”

Peter still looked puzzled. “You built a precise scale for. a person?”

“Exactly.” She lifted the transparent lid on the machine. “If I place a person inside this capsule and close the lid, the individual is in an entirely sealed system. Nothing gets in or out. No gas, no liquid, no dust particles. Nothing can escape — not the person’s breath exhalations, evaporating sweat, body fluids, nothing.”

Peter ran a hand through his thick head of silver hair, a nervous mannerism shared by Katherine. “Hmm. obviously a person would die in there pretty quickly.”