Part one: The fisherman ring
VO:
The Ring of the Fisherman, which bears the official papal seal, must be destroyed immediately following the Pope's death.
The Papal apartment is then sealed for nine days of mourning, a period known as "Sede Vacante", the time of the empty throne.
Over the last several days, Catholic leaders from every corner of the world have flocked to Rome, shocked by the sudden death of this progressive and beloved pope.
Today, in St. Peter's Square, the faithful pray that there is among them another leader who can unite their church, which has been so riven by change and dissent in recent years.
As the body of the pontif passes by, we see prayers are being offered by the Preferiti, favorites among those being considered to succeed him as the Vicar of Christ.
At the end of the mourning period, the College of Cardinals will lock itself behind the doors of the Sistine Chapel for Conclave.
The process by which they will choose a new leader for the world's one billion Catholics who now find their church at a crossroads, its ancient traditions threatened by a modern world.
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Part two: CERN Antimatter Creation
Attention: Control booth going online.
We are powering up.
Attention Category 1 personnel.
Interlock areas are now restricted.
You've blocked all access, Philippe.
You are terrified because you gave it your all.
The accelerator should never create antimatter.
It's only three cylinders under high security. I only ask you to wait.
We can't wait any longer.
Antimatter is only the beginning. We will have free access.
But listen, even with proper calibration, we might not be prepared.
Just call the director. Stop this.
ATLAS underground is now a restricted vault.
Vittoria, Vittoria...
Protons are being loaded.
This will not blast us to the other side, so, please.
Powering on LHC magnets.
Ionic stage in 4, 3, 2...
Start the collision sequence.
Vittoria, what did Phillipe want?
He about shitted. We should still wait. What do you think?
It's now or never.
Beam stability is good. Take your places, people.
ATLAS and CMS checked.
Trigger is set. Collision is imminent.
Let's hope the heavy ion guys didn't mess up.
Luminosity monitors operational.
B-line has no restrictions.
Enable beam capture.
Accelerating the beam.
Stage 1: Line up.
Magnets to full field.
Last P still too high.
We are moving up the luminosity 10 to 34.
Eject particle beams.
Filling the LHC.
Fusion commenced. We are back online.
The merger may be any time.
Particles in transition.
Collisions are fixed and running.
LHC injecting protons: Beam 1.
Lock the feedback systems.
Particles at 99% the speed of light.
Colliding stable beams.
Enact injection kicker.
We have a signal on the luminosity monitors.
We have events.
Protons are moving.
We have created antimatter.
The unknown has been created.
Silvano, we have succeeded.
We are now in God's hands, Vittoria.
I am on my way.
Silvano?
Silvano!
Oh, God.
Help! Aiuto! Aiuto!
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Part Three: Dr. LANGDON to Vatican
LANGDON:
A swim might help your jet lag.
CLAUDIO:
I beg your pardon?
LANGDON:
The bags under your eyes. It's five in the morning and you're from the Vatican.
Crossed keys under the Triregnum.
It's a papal symbol.
CLAUDIO:
Claudio Vicenze. Corpo della Gendarmeria Vaticano.
LANGDON:
Vatican Police?
I was expecting another letter.
My request for access to your archives.
Shouldn't you be in Rome?
Kind of a busy time for you guys, huh?
CLAUDIO:
In fact, I was in New York.
A detail to the UN. I received a phone call in the middle of the night.
"Find Professor Robert Langdon. A matter of great urgency."
They said to show you this.
CLAUDIO:
The Illuminati? They disappeared hundreds of years ago.
LANGDON:
Did they?
Look at that again. It's an ambigram.
It's the same image, forward and backward.
Now, that's common for a symbol like a Yin and Yang or a swastika but... that's a word.
That Illuminati ambigramatic symbol has been considered a myth for 400 years.
Supposedly, in the 16th century, some artist created it as a tribute to Galileo's love of symmetry.
It was only gonna be revealed when the Illuminati had amassed enough power to resurface and carry out their final goal.
I wrote a book about it.
Which is why you're here.
CLAUDIO:
"The Art of the Illuminati" by Robert Langdon.
LANGDON:
Part One.
I haven't been able to finish Part Two because I'm not allowed access to your archives.
LANGDON:
It's remarkable. Similar.
Someone is trying to make you believe the Illuminati themselves have returned to Rome.
Right after the death of a pope.
CLAUDIO:
Four cardinals were kidnapped from their quarter's inside the Vatican sometime between 3 and 5 am this morning.
Shortly afterward, that document was sent to the office of the Swiss Guard along with the threat the Cardinals will be publicly executed one per hour begining at 8 pm tonight in Rome.
LANGDON:
The conclave?
CLAUDIO:
Was to begin today.
We have postponed the start for a few hours with the story of illness.
There are no suspicions... yet.
LANGDON:
What do you want from me?
CLAUDIO:
These criminals, who sent this ambigram, meant it as a taunt, a provocation.
But Captain Olivetti think if you can use it to learn their identity, perhaps we can stop this abomination.
LANGDON:
Why me?
CLAUDIO:
Your expertise. Your erudition.
Your recent involvement with certain church...
shall we say... mysteries.
LANGDON:
I wasn't under the impression that episode had endeared me to the Vatican.
CLAUDIO:
Oh, it didn't.
But it did make you, what is the word for...
"formidable"?
LANGDON:
Formidable?
CLAUDIO:
A Vatican jet is standing by twenty minutes from here.
Will you come with me?
Professor Langdon.
You've spent your life searching for symbols like the one you now hold in your hand.
How much longer are we going to pretend you have not already decided to come?
If the Illuminati have returned and are in Rome, we will hunt them down and kill them.
LANGDON:
The Illuminati did not become violent until the 17th century.
Their name means 'The Enlightened Ones'.
They were physicists, mathematicians, astronomers.
They were concerned with the church's inaccurate teachings and they were dedicated to scientific truth.
But the Vatican didn't like that.
So, the church began to, how did you say it?
Oh. Hunt them down and kill them.
Drove them underground into a secret society.
-------------------------
Part Four: The Swiss Guard
OLIVETTI:
Professor Langdon.
LANGDON:
Yes?
OLIVETTI:
Welcome to Vatican City.
Ernesto Olivetti, Inspector General of the Vatican Police Force.
LANGDON:
My pleasure.
OLIVETTI:
This way please.
We'll meet in the headquarters of the Swiss Guard.
LANGDON:
I thought you were Swiss Guard.
OLIVETTI:
No, uh, the Gendarmaria.
We are responsible for everything inside the Vatican walls with the exception of the security of His Holiness...
LANGDON:
Yeah.
OLIVETTI:
... and the Apostolic Palace.
That is Swiss Guard.
The Roman Carabinieri are here as well in an advisory capacity.
So jurisdictionally this is...
OLIVETTI:
A goddamn nightmare.
LANGDON:
Oh, yes. Pope Pius IX's great castration.
OLIVETTI:
I beg your pardon?
LANGDON:
1857. Pope Pius IX felt the male form would inspire lust.
So, he took a hammer and chisel and 'un-manned' hundreds of these statues.
The plaster fig leaves were added later.
OLIVETTI:
Are you anti-Catholic, Professor Langdon?
LANGDON:
No. I'm anti-vandalism.
OLIVETTI:
I urge you to guard your tone here.
The Swiss Guard is a calling, not a profession, and it encourages a certain civiltry.
Commander Richter, the head of the Guard, is a deeply spiritual man.
He was close to the late Pope. Understood?
LANGDON:
Look, I dont study symbols because I consider them unimportant.
Ceremony, traditions, heavily mark our lives.
I just hope I can help.
OLIVETTI:
So do I.
You were my idea.
Wait here. Please.
Commander? Commander Richter?
RICHTER:
Doctor Vetra?
I'm Commander Richter, principal of the Swiss Guard. Thank you for coming.
VITTORIA:
Hello.
RICHTER:
Oh. Professor Langdon.
What a relief. The symbologist is here.
This way, please, Miss Vetra.
OLIVETTI:
The situation has changed.
We received another threat from the kidnapper.
VITTORIA:
The canister was stolen from my lab around noon yesterday.
The intruder killed my research partner, Silvano Paintivolio and mutilated him in order to bypass security.
We use retinal scanners.
They cut out his eye.
RICHTER:
Is that your stolen canister, Ms. Vetra?
VITTORIA:
Where is that camera, number 86?
OLIVETTI:
It's wireless.
It, too, was stolen. It could be anywhere inside the Vatican walls.
VITTORIA:
That canister contains an extremely combustible substance called antimatter.
We need to locate it immediately. We evacuate Vatican City.
RICHTER:
I'm quite familiar with incendiaries, Miss Vetra.
I've never heard of antimatter being used as such.
VITTORIA:
Well, its never been generated in significant quantities before.
It's a way of studying the origins of the universe.
To try to isolate what some people call "the God Particle".
But there are implications for energy, research-
RICHTER:
"God Particle"?
VITTORIA:
What you call it isn't important.
It's what gives all matter mass. The thing without which we could not exist.
LANGDON:
You're talking about the moment of creation.
VITTORIA:
Yes, in a way, I am.
The antimatter is suspended there...
in an airtight nano-composite shell with electromagnets on each end.
But if it were to fall out of suspension, and come into contact with matter, say with the bottom of the canister, then, the two opposing forces would annihilate one another violently.
RICHTER:
What might cause it to fall out of suspension?
VITTORIA:
The battery going dead.
Which it will just before midnight.
RICHTER:
What kind of annihilation? How violent?
VITTORIA:
A cataclysmic event.
A blinding explosion equivalent to about 5 kilotons.
LANGDON:
Vatican City will be consumed by light.
RICHTER:
Those are the exact words the kidnapper used.
VOICE:
We will destroy your four pillars.
We will brand your Preferiti and sacrifice them on the altars of science.
Then bring your church down upon you.
Vatican City will be consumed by light.
A shining star at the end of the Path of Illumination.
LANGDON:
It's the ancient Illuminati threat. Destruction of Vatican City through light.
Four pillars. There's your kidnapped cardinals.
You didn't tell me they were the Preferiti, the favorites to be named the next Pope.
Play it again.
VOICE:
We will destroy your four pillars.
We will brand your Preferiti...
LANGDON:
Wait, stop it. Stop.
Brand them?
That's another Illuminati legend.
This one says that there are a set of five 'Brands'.
Each one an ambigram.
The first four are the fundamental elements of science: earth, air, fire and water.
Th fifth is a mystery.
Maybe it's this.
RICHTER:
You said they'd be killed publicly.
LANGDON:
Yes. Revenge. For La Purga.
RICHTER:
La Purga?
LANGDON:
Geez, you guys don't even read your own history, do you?
1668. The church kidnapped four Illuminati scientists and branded each one of them on the chest with the symbol of the cross.
To 'purge' them of their sins and they executed them, threw their bodies out in the street as a warning to others to stop questioning church rulings on scientific matters. They radicalized them.
The Purga created a darker, more violent Illuminati.
Went bent on... on retribution.
And look how they intend to finally get it. Using anti-matter.
Technology to destroy the church. Science obliterates religion.
Is there any more?
VOICE:
...and sacrifice them on the altars of science.
Then bring your church down upon you.
Vatican City will be consumed by light.
A shining star at the end of the Path of Illumination.
LANGDON:
Path of Illumination?
I need access to the Vatican archives.
OLIVETTI:
Professor, I don't think this is the appropriate moment-
RICHTER:
Your petition has been denied seven times.
LANGDON:
No, no. This has
This has nothing to do with my work.
The Path of Illumination is a hidden trail through Rome itself that leads to the Church of the Illumination.
The place where the Illuminati would meet in secret.
If I can find the "Segno", the sign, that marks the beginning of that path, the four churches along it.
It may be where he intends to murder your Cardinals.
One every hour. At 8, 9, 10 and 11. Then the device explodes at midnight.
If we could figure out the first church and get there before he does, maybe we could stop it.
But I can't find the start of the path until I get into the archives.
RICHTER:
Even if I wanted to help you, access to the archives is only by written decree by the curator on the Board of Vatican Librarians.
LANGDON:
Or by papal mandate.
RICHTER:
Yes, but, as you no doubt have heard, the Holy Father is dead.
LANGDON:
What about il Camerlengo?
RICHTER:
The Camerlengo is just a priest here. The former pope's chamberlain.
LANGDON:
Doesn't the power of the Holy See rest in him during "Tempo Sede Vacante"?
Fellas, you called me.
-----------------------------------
Part Five: Camerlango Patrick, permit to Vatican Archives
CAMERLANGO:
His Holiness once told me the Pope is a man torn between the real world and the divine.
It seems the real world is upon us tonight.
I'm familiar with Illuminati lore and the legend of the brandings.
The Purga is a dark stain on this church's history.
I'm not surprised this ghost has returned to haunt us.
Commandante, have you begun a search for this explosive device?
RICHTER:
Of course, but it could be anywhere.
My primary concern at the moment is the safety of the cardinals.
CAMERLANGO:
The Sistine Chapel is a fortress.
As long as the cardinals are in conclave, your security concerns are at a minimum.
Devote as many of your people...
RICHTER:
Signore, if you are about to suggest a naked eye search of the entire Vatican City, I will tell you...
CAMERLANGO:
Commander.
RICHTER:
... I do not have the people.
CAMERLANGO:
Although I am not His Holiness, when you are addressing me, you are addressing this office.
Do you understand?
RICHTER:
Yes, Father.
CAMERLANGO:
Good.
Now, you said the image on the screen was illuminated by artificial light.
Might I suggest methodically cutting power to various sections of the city?
When the image on the screen goes dark, you'll have a more specific idea of the camera's location.
Dr. Vetra, beside yourself and your research partner, who else knew about this antimatter project?
VITTORIA:
No one but the research team.
This project was strictly confidential.
But Silvano kept detailed journals.
If he told anyone else about what we were doing, he would have made a note of it.
CAMERLANGO:
And do you have these journals?
VITTORIA:
I can have them flown here from Geneva in an hour.
CAMERLANGO:
Please.
Professor Langdon.
Mr. Langdon.
You are correct that I may grant you access to the archives.
LANGDON:
Thank you, Padre.
CAMERLANGO:
I said that you are correct that I may, not- not that I will.
Christianity's most sacred codes are in that archive.
Given your recent entanglement with the church, there is a question I'd like to ask you first, here, in the office of His Holiness.
Do you believe in God, Sir?
LANGDON:
Father, I simply believe that religion...
CAMERLANGO:
I did not ask you if you believe what man says about God.
I asked if you believe in God.
LANGDON:
I'm an academic.
My mind tells me I will never understand God.
CAMERLANGO:
And your heart?
LANGDON:
Tells me I'm not meant to.
Faith is a gift that I have yet to receive.
CAMERLANGO:
Be delicate with our treasures.