6

After a sixty-four-minute flight, Robert Langdon lands in Switzerland, disoriented and airsick from the extreme altitude and speed of CERN’s X-33 aircraft. The pilot explains that they have crossed six time zones and casually describes the plane’s capabilities, leaving Langdon shaken by how ordinary the impossible flight seemed.

The pilot drives Langdon across the valley toward CERN at alarming speed. During the ride, the pilot describes CERN as a small city with its own services and mentions that it houses the largest machine on earth, hidden six stories underground.

At a security checkpoint, Langdon panics because he has no passport, but the pilot explains that CERN has an arrangement with the Swiss government. The sentry verifies the pilot’s ID, confirms Langdon as a guest of the director, and allows the car through.

The car arrives at CERN’s main glass-and-steel building, nicknamed the Glass Cathedral. The pilot jokes that physics functions as CERN’s religion, deepening Langdon’s sense that he has entered an unfamiliar and intensely scientific world.

Langdon reads the CERN sign and realizes the facility is the European Council for Nuclear Research. As Langdon steps out, Maximilian Kohler, bald, gaunt, and wheelchair-bound, comes to meet him in person and identifies himself as the man who summoned Langdon by phone.