Book Review: Deception Point by Dan Brown

Deception Point by Dan Brown

Presidential elections were on the cards.

There was a tension between the current US President and his opposition party candidate Senator Sexton.
The main qualm between the two parties was regarding the space organization NASA. According to Senator Sexton, NASA was wasting billions of dollars of budget on space missions that were resulting in zero zippo zilch that is, in nothing at all. On the flip side, according to the current President Herney, the abolishment or privatization of NASA would result in powerful space secrets and talent going into the hands of private organizations who were driven by advertising.

Senator Sexton brainwashed the public saying that the billions of dollars spent on NASA’s fruitless missions could be utilized on students’ education, corporations and jobs. Whereas, President Herney had no evidence to support his argument. It was evident that Senator Sexton would experience the win in the upcoming election and President Herney, loss. But events unfolded in such a way that left both parties baffled beyond wonderment.
Somewhere in the Milne Ice Shelf, beneath thick layers of glacial Arctic ice, NASA discovered a shiny rock, which upon experimentation was concluded to be a meteorite from another planet. The meteorite contained fossils of giant-sized bugs, hinting the proof of extraterrestial life.
The sudden discovery turned the tables for the aspiring presidential parties. Keeping the discovery a secret, President Herney decided to reveal it in a worldwide video conference. Behind the scenes, he brought into picture an intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton from the national intelligence agency NRO.
Rachel was the daughter of Senator Sexton. She had a conflicting relationship with her father, first because she thought her father was a mysogynist, and second because she worked in an organization that belonged to President Herney’s party and her father despised her for that.
Upon NASA’s meteorite discovery, President Herney secretly called Rachel to confirm the discovery by going to Milne Ice Shelf, seeing the meteorite and then brief his team about the same.
Puzzled, before she could digest all the information, she was taken to the Arctic ice in a private chopper. There she met a scientist, a geologist and a celebrity oceanographer who too like Rachel, were personally hired by the president to test the authenticity of the meteorite. They were certain of the discovery that NASA had indeed discovered a meteorite with the proof of life on other planets. They had prepared a documentary film with the evidences which the President would showcase to the world in his video conference.
There was an abrupt turn of events when Rachel and these scientists discovered illuminating planktons in the water of the pit from where the meteorite was taken out. Upon testing further, they found out that the water was salty, hinting that it was from ocean. The moment they made these discoveries, they got attacked by ice bullets from unknown assailants and got thrown in the depths of the Arctic ocean. Although they got saved by a military submarine, they got bushwacked and tracked by these unknown attackers. Meanwhile, Rachel discovered a stunning deception that sent chills down her spine
She needed to reveal this deception to President Herney but before she could, she got attacked again by the unknown assailants who almost shot her down into the moonlit sea waters where sharks were waiting to devour her.
Once rescued from the deadly sea, almost frozen and terrified by the deceptions unfurled, she reached the press conference where her father Senator Sexton was going to destroy NASA and President Herney by revealing the information about the deceptions. But his blind ambition overthrew him in the pit of his own scandalous past activities including bribery and secret affair with his personal assistant. The flabbergasting deceptions of NASA got revealed to the public but also the shadows behind Senator Sexton. But both the NASA as well as President Herney were innocent bystanders, unaware of the whole game.
Ostensively, the meteorite which NASA had discovered as well as the discovery itself was a big fraud well-fabricated by a mastermind to secure NASA from losing its foothold. It was not even a meteorite but an ocean rock burned by slushhydrogen, made to appear like a meteorite and inserted under the ice shelf manually. But what was even bigger a deception was the person who was the mastermind behind all this plan. He was a person Rachel could never expect in lifetimes. Her boss Bill Pickering, the director of the intelligence organization NRO where she worked as the intelligence gister.
Like most hoodwinkers, Pickering too had his own personal motives and agendas behind being overly protective for NASA, for he wanted to acquire it under his intelligence organization. His deception worked in a way killing many innocents who lost their lives to the bullets of his machine guns and his secret poison-tinted spy cameras and flying microbots including president’s loyal and brainy senior advisor Marjorie Tench.
Like other Dan Brown books, this mystery too is intriguing and tantalizing with endless tunnels of twists between twists. The settings are well-described especially the scenes on the Arctic glacier and the adjoining seas. Concepts and facts are researched in detailing which only adds more allurement to the overall story. Each chapter is a drawing card for the following chapter. The unpredictability of the plot makes the book unputdownable till the very end!

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Book Review: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

For once, picture a religious cult in your imagination. A cult that follows secret rites and rituals. Then picture a man joining the cult and masquerading as the member of the cult but only to infiltrate it and dig out its mystical secrets to become powerful.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown is a fiction novel depicting the story of a cult named as the Masons cult. Robert Langdon, a professor of symbology and Dan Brown’s signature protagonist character stumbles upon this cult quite all of a sudden.

Robert’s friend, Peter Soloman, is the head of the Masonic cult. One day Robert received a call from Peter’s assistant inviting him to give a lecture in an event going to be held in the Capitol Building in Washington D.C.

He also requested Robert to bring a package with him, a package which he entrusted to him many years earlier.

But as soon as Robert reached the venue, he came to know that the call was a hoax and the man posing as Peter’s assistant had lured him to find the secret Lost Word and the ancient pyramid owned & hidden by the Masonic cult, or else he would kill old Peter to death. This man named Mal’akh, tattoos carved throughout his entire body, had kidnapped Peter and was seeking to unfold the secrets of the cult in order to become more powerful. And so, he charged Robert for doing this work for him.

On the other side, led by the trail of clues Robert became more and more puzzled at every step.

When he reached the hall where he was asked to give his lecture, in place of an audience he found a hand displayed at the center of the hall. The hand had been severed from the body of his friend Peter by his kidnapper. The hand was tattooed with the symbols of the Hand of Mysteries.

Examining Soloman’s hand, along with the police officials, he discovered a clue which led them to a room in the building which was the masonic altar comprising several symbolic objects and a pyramid with inscriptions engraved on it. The pyramid’s capstone was missing.

The capstone was later discovered in the small package Robert had brought, when the police official named Sato examined his bag under the x-ray machine. Robert explained to her that he was unaware of the contents of the package. However, still, he was taken into custody by Sato. He was rescued by another man named Warren Bellamy who was the architect of the building. He too belonged to the Masons cult and was seeking Robert’s help in rescuing Peter from his kidnapper.

Meanwhile, the kidnapper man Mal’akh destroyed the Noetic Science laboratory of Peter’s sister Katherine by tricking and drowning her assistant in an animal pod of ethanol.

To save herself, Katherine united with Robert and Bellamy. Katherine and Robert reach Mal’akh’s house, where they were gagged and left to die in sensory deprivation tank and through needles respectively. Leaving both of them, Mal’akh fled away from the house with a weak Peter, arriving at the House of the Temple, where he threatened him to reveal the ancient secret to him.

Why was this man Mal’akh so vengeful towards Robert, Peter and the cult? Well, the answer lied in his history. Mal’akh actually was Soloman’s son Zachary. He was carrying wrath and revenge in his heart because many years ago he had been abandoned by his father in the jail as he had been spoiling his wealth in drugs and luxury.

By the time, his true identity became revealed, the police official Sato had reached Mal’akh’s house where she saved both Katherine and Robert. Thereupon, the entire crew moved towards the House of the Temple where one of their helicopters shatters the skylight of the temple, the shards of which killed Malakh to death.

In the end, Peter revealed that the Lost Word, the Word of God lay in the cornerstone of the monument where they were, buried in the ground beneath monument’s staircase.

He also told that the words inscribed in the base of the pyramid were Laus Deo meaning Praise God.

Masons had buried and hid the pyramid with the thought that when the time was right, the pyramid would be discovered and would usher a new era of enlightenment, which, apparently, had arrived, by means of Robert.

The novel mentions ideas of ‘mind over matter’, spirituality & enlightenment, ancient symbology & Noetic Science. Like other parts of this series, this book too is quite entertaining and immersive. I totally enjoyed reading it!

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Book Review: Digital Fortress by Dan Brown | Human Mind is the Greatest Supercomputer!

Digital Fortress by Dan Brown

Human Mind is the Greatest Supercomputer!

In the material nature, which is composed of five elements, anything and everything is a mortal entity. Never immortal. The elemental energy, as it moves through the dimension of time-space, it changes several forms along the way. And therefore, each form is but only a transitory and mortal entity. The duration for which a particular form lasts, may vary from one form to the other, but there is a certain truth about every material form. That is, at one point in time, it is going to disintegrate, collapse and dissolve into its breakdown.

This fact about the world of material objects carries a 100% probability.

Now, what about the world of non-material objects? Objects, such as, thoughts…

Even these appearances we call as our ‘thoughts’ are nothing more than wavelets arising out of an ocean of gigantic memory – a memory which gets programmed in our human system, as we navigate a variety of experiences throughout lifetime. Even these thoughts, bubbling and falling all the time, have an expiry date. Even though, perhaps the cassette tape of these thoughts might never seem to come to a halt, however, over time, the content of these thoughts seem to break, dissipate and transform, especially if we pay attention to them.

This entity we call as the brain, is a magnanimously-intelligent computer, that churns out thoughts, bringing them to the light of our attention, wherein, the thought forms deconstruct and ultimately self-destruct themselves, settling back into the ocean from where they first emerged.

Alright.

Moving on and further, shall we ask, what about the world of technology? What about the program codes written in the memory of an actual computer, in order to facilitate its functioning?

Typically, in the community of hackers, cryptographers and programmers, the programs and codes are seen with the viewpoint of their ‘breakability’. That is, how easy or complex it is, for them, to break a certain code.

Above everything else, this pops up a series of questions for the one trying to break a piece of code. Questions such as,

“How easy or difficult it is to break this code?”
“Is there an unbreakable code?”
“If there exists an unbreakable code, then, what implications it can have, if it gets into the hands of someone with evil intentions?”

Well, this novel, titled Digital Fortress by Dan Brown is a techno-thriller that unfolds a story musing over scenarios like these in a twisty sequence of events packed and embedded cleverly into the story.

The story is mainly set in a location comprising of the handsome premises of a setting of tech-powered buildings which belong to the largest intelligence security agency of United States, named as NSA (National Security Agency). The job that NSA does is likely to the metaphor of the Big Brother. Which means that they have access to all the information belonging to the public as well as to the government. All this information, along with all the details of the encryption algorithms, is stored inside their gazillion-sized gigantic data banks. In short, the job of NSA is to be an invisible eye for securing the information from unethical access, as well as keeping a careful watch on the dangerous information exchanges from groups such as terrorist organizations, dark web communities, fraudulent activities, and so on…
They are the one who guard the guards of the national intelligence.

Top-of-the-line code-breakers and some of the most brilliant minds in cryptography work for NSA.

Well, above and beyond all this, NSA has created something which they are proud of, the most. NSA has a supercomputer called TRANSLTR. According to the commander of NSA, the TRANSLTR is the greatest and the most efficient supercomputer that can break any code.

Yet, one day, this computer encounters a code that it doesn’t seem to be able to break. The code keeps running and running in a loop. Which, not only wastes a large amount of their computer’s electrical power. but also blocks it from processing other codes pending in their queue. Worried, the commander of NSA, Trevor Strathmore calls their head cryptographer Susan Fletcher to check up on what was happening.

To their dismay, Strathmore and Susan discover that NSA is being held a hostage by this code which its creator calls as the ‘Digital Fortress’. The code was written by a former NSA employee Ensei Tankado, who had a personal enemity with NSA because he thought that they were doing an inethical job by keeping an intrusive eye on the personal information of the people of America. Being a genius cryptographer and almost a cult icon among hackers, Tankado warned NSA that they must reveal their intrusion to the public or either lose their supercomputer TRANSLTR to Digital Fortress, a code which he told them, was unbreakable. Besides, he warned them that if they were unable to reveal the truth to the public in a given span of time, he would release the unbreakable code worldwide, which would destroy NSA’s reputation, by giving access to NSA’s data bank to even a three-year old, forget about the terrorists, criminals and other secret communities. It was NSA’s job after all, to encrypt and protect the information of the government and its people.

Susan Fletcher, though the head cryptographer and a brilliant mathematician, was unable to crack this code. But at the same time, she couldn’t believe that there could be an unbreakable code. In cryptography, an unbreakable code is a mathematical impossibility.

Their only hope, if they had one, was to find a passkey, as quick as possible, which could stop this loopy code from running on TRANSLTR, and also prevent Tankado from releasing this unbreakable code to the public.

However, to multiply their trouble, they find that Tankado, the 32-year old cryptographer has died a sudden death in Spain. The NSA commander Strathmore sends David Becker to retrieve the passkey, which, according to their information, was lettered and engraved on a gold ring worn by Tankado. David, a professor who taught Linguistics and Modern Languages, was not directly connected to NSA, but being the fiancee of Susan Fletcher, was the only trustworthy person Strathmore could entrust with this secret.

Arriving in Spain, David finds that he has not only lost the ring from Tankado’s body, but he was being pursued by an unknown man whose name was Hulohot. Entrapped in a cat-and-mouse chase with Hulohot, each clue that David stumbles upon, makes him feel as if he is moving further and away from where the ring could be found.

On the other side, every moment running short of time, NSA’s Cryptography Division witnesses an unusual commotion. While Strathmore and Susan Fletcher are unable to arrive either at a conclusion or a decision, the rest of the employees, began to sense something strange going on. One of the employees, Phil Chartrukian, thinking that a bug has seeped into TRANSLTR, rushes to power off the computer, only to get burned in the power room.

As Susan pours her attention over and over to the Digital Fortress as well as to all the clues, startling reality is revealed, sending shivers down her spine, and breaking her heart to the core. Concluding that she cannot trust anybody, not even the NSA Commander Strathmore, she decides to escape from the Crypto as quick as possible, but finds herself locked inside the building which is completely automated by computers and technology.

Meanwhile, the departments in other buildings of NSA are also beginning to sense something suspicious going on in the Crypto division. But before they can do anything about it, the employees watch from the windows, as the domed metallic crypto building is fuming with volcanoes of molten metal and splinters of metallic chips fireworking like discolights through the entire Crypto building.

Nearly all the employees of the Crypto department present inside the building are burned to ashes. Susan Fletcher is able to escape.

Together with the NSA Director named Fontaine, Susan and some other employees of NSA, and David who is found half-unconscious in Spain, they are able to crack the passkey just in the last moment, which also freezes them into a stunning revelation.

Digital Fortress was nothing but a deception, a ghost. There was no such algorithm. Tankado had lured them to an illusion and NSA had taken the bait by believing that there actually was an algorithm with an unbreakable code. Lured, frightened and taken into his trap, NSA’s Commander Strathmore had bypassed the security virus filters and had unconsciously participated in allowing this Digital Fortress algorithm to run on their supercomputer. While Tankado had simply written a delusory code, and fearing the unbreakability, NSA had bypassed their security checks, letting the Digital Fortress to disrupt the functioning of their own supercomputer (TRANSLTR).

Though, in the end, the passkey they find is able to prevent their data banks from getting leaked into the public, and secure their supercomputer.

All in all, the book is an intruiging and immersive work of fiction, mainly relating to the themes of mystery, suspense, technological thriller, government surveillance, adventure fiction and science fiction.

The scenes are written and depicted in a way that not only keeps the reader’s attention immersed and gripped, but also enables the experience of a curious tension building up over time, as we flip through the chapters. No wonder, the storyline is a magnetic tangle of plot twists, but at the same time, it is quite insightful and thought-provoking too, especially when we talk about the present day, in the age when the digital transformation is rapidly taking over the globe…

Wrapping it all up, Digital Fortress is a brilliant work of fiction that leaves us with an imprint worthy of deep reflection…that is,
Great supercomputers appear and disappear. But human mind is the greatest supercomputer, the greatest of all, the most mysterious of all. So, operate wisely!

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Book Review: Origin by Dan Brown

Origin by Dan Brown

Humans.

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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