Early in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, a math teacher and organist explains to Lawrence Waterhouse how organs worked. "When Lawrence understood, it was as i

Early in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, a math teacher and organist explains to Lawrence Waterhouse how organs worked. "When Lawrence understood, it was as if the math teacher had suddenly played the good part of Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor [BWV 542] on a pipe organ the size of the Spiral Nebula in Andromeda—the part where Uncle Johann dissects the architecture of the Universe in one merciless escending ever-mutating chord, as if his foot is thrusting through skidding layers of garbage until it finally strikes bedrock. In particular, the final steps of the organist's explanation were like a falcon's dive through layer after layer of pretense and illusion, thrilling or sickening or confusing depending on what you were. The heavens were riven open. Lawrence glimpsed choirs of angels ranking off into geometrical infinity."