Book One: Discovery

0: We witness the death of a giant star, and the birth of a massive, compact object that is hurled away from its birthplace.

1: Twenty-two million years later, in the first few days of the year that will later be known as 9 BP (Before Perigee, closest approach to Earth), we meet astronomers Langston Conrad and Puneet Nagarajan, who find evidence that a previously unseen black hole may be relatively nearby, and headed for the solar system.

2: Langston and Puneet decide not to go public with the anomaly until they are more confident about what it is. A later observation they make of a lensing event convinces them that they have to tell someone what they have found. They name the object Kali, after a Hindu Goddess.

3: In a jarring scene shift, we meet Jun-Jun Lagahit, a Philippine rice farmer who is happy to be working his family rice field.

4: Langston and Puneet discuss their observations with Tom Hastings, their department chairman, and a few more details come out about the black hole.

5: Langston and Tom travel to Washington DC to meet with Jerome Quigley, Presidential Science Advisor. They discuss getting NASA to help with observations of Kali from a telescope in space.

6: The results of the space telescope observations predict that Kali will disrupt the orbit of Earth, ejecting it, along with most of the other planets, into interstellar space in less than ten years.

7: Langston, Puneet, and Tom are invited to a special briefing in Washington for the National Security Council. There they learn that the government has already accurately predicted what will happen with Kali, and Secretary of Defense Michael Molson describes a controversial plan to build underground, nuclear-powered shelters which can save only a few select people. At the end of the briefing, President Turner asks to speak privately with Langston.

8: Langston gives the President his vision of saving the planet by a crash program to develop productive nanosystems.

9: President Turner announces Kali to the world, and announces that we will attempt to create technologies to save everyone on the planet.

10: We meet Kate Acton, a primatologist at the University of Michigan, as she hears the President’s announcement of Kali. She is devastated by the news.

11: Jun-Jun hears confusing information about Kali, and sends a letter to a cousin working overseas to find out if he can get any real information about it.

12: Kate attends a conference in Washington where the government is looking for input to the direction and focus for preparation efforts. She is skeptical that anything can be done. Kate meets Langston in a breakout group. There are sharp divisions within the group over what, if anything, should be done.

13: Langston talks to his parents about meeting and liking Kate. Langston’s mother, Teresa, is enthusiastic about Langston showing interest in someone.

14: The results of the planning conference are announced. Four efforts are described: building a series of underground, self-sufficient labs, advancing nanotechnology, automated design tools, and human cognitive enhancement.

15: Excerpts from Science Advisor Jerome Quigley’s personal journal, where we learn the back story of how the President survived a coup, and possibly assassination, at the hands of Defense Secretary Michael Molson, and how world leaders were informed of Kali.

16: In a brief scene, we meet a tortured soul who did not like the outcome of the planning conference.

17: Emails between Langston and Kate, where Langston is optimistic, and Kate thinks the situation is hopeless.

18: A few months later, we meet Tino and Amalia Dédalo, the main forces behind a small Palo Alto-based nanotech startup, Nanocom4. The have just been granted $100M to develop the Tree of Life Architecture, TLA, which uses crowdsourcing to design smart material structures which are intended to solve many of the physical problems due to the loss of the Sun.

19: Langston describes the TLA in more detail to Kate in an email. We also read about the rise of the Denialists, a movement consisting of people who refuse to believe the scientific evidence for Kali posing a danger to Earth.

20: We meet Amita, Puneet’s 14-year-old sister, a prodigy in math and computers, who is a student in Computer Science at the University of Utah, where Puneet is now doing research on the danger posed to Earth by asteroids disturbed by the passage of Kali. Puneet and Amita meet and converse with neuroscientist Radu Toma, recently arrived from Romania, who is doing work on cognitive enhancement. Amita is intrigued by this.

21: We learn that Langston has joined forces with the Nanocom4 group, and that he is in Palo Alto to join in a webinar to encourage public participation in their crowdsourced work. Details of how the TLA is being developed are discussed, and we learn about MolTAR technology, which can produce modest amounts of molecularly precise products. The meeting is taken over by hackers, who invite everyone to join “Geo” on an anonymous mail list.

22: It is now October. Langston is on the campus of the University of Michigan to meet with Kate. They have dinner and discuss the science behind Kali. They both admit their attraction, and finally kiss, but Kate seems troubled and leaves precipitously.

23: Jun-Jun is exploring a cave on his property, with an eye to converting it to a shelter for use after Kali comes. We learn that as a result of the letter he sent to his cousin, he has been contacted by a group that is providing computers to poor villages, and that Jun-Jun became fascinated by the technology, and used it to learn much more about Kali, and the threat it poses. He announces that he is going to build a shelter for their families in the cave.

24: Back in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a few hours after the dinner with Kate, Langston hears from her that she would like to have breakfast with him. They meet, and Kate explains why she ran off, and confesses her feelings for Langston.

25: Two months later, Nanocom4 discovers that their computers have been hacked, and someone is stealing time on a supercomputer to do simulations of something biologically active.

26: We learn that Langston and Kate have married, and are living in Kate’s apartment in Ann Arbor. Puneet, in Salt Lake City, contacts Langston and tells him that Amita has been missing for over a day.

27: A brief note from Amita, telling Puneet that she is okay, and will be home in a couple of days.

28: We learn that Amita is experimenting with a cognitive enhancement nanocapsule device called MNI-3: Metaplastic Neural Inducer. The back story is told how Amita quickly came up to speed on molecular biology and neuroscience over the last few months, and has contributed to the development of this system. We meet Amita’s friend, Laura, a molecular biologist grad student also working on MNI, but for testing on mice. It turns out that Toma has leaped ahead and created a human version, and has tried it on himself with remarkable results. Amita manages to steal the formula from Toma’s computer, and creates a few capsules for herself. The nanocapsules work perfectly with Amita, but upon waking up after taking MNI-3 a second time, she sees that her friend, Laura, is dead.

29: Amita learns that Laura had taken MNI-3, which was what apparently killed her. Amita goes to the police station, but refuses to talk to the SLC police. Soon FBI agent Glenn Brown takes Amita to meet with her brother, Puneet, Radu Toma, and another staff member at Toma’s lab. We learn that when Amita hacked Toma’s computer, her own computer was hacked, and that the formula for MNI-3 may have been stolen.

30: The next day, Agent Brown shows up at Puneet and Amita’s apartment with Langston Conrad’s parents: George, a computer science teacher, and Teresa, a mathematician. After analysis of Amita’s computer, Brown reveals that Amita is a well-known hacker, 2infinite4u, who has created a lot of trouble for content providers. The government has also learned that Amita has off-the-chart math skills, and Brown has been instructed to take Amita, accompanied by Teresa Conrad, to an underground lab in Texas.

31: In the Philippines, Jun-Jun’s 2½ year old daughter Nenita has taken gravely ill. He takes her to the nearest town, but they say she needs to go to a hospital in the main city on their island. He takes her there, where he is assisted by a kind nurse to get Nenita admitted to the hospital. On his way to pray at a church, Jun-Jun notices an internet café, and he stops in to send an email back to the village. He meets Mo Pindoy, who runs the place. Jun-Jun decides to do some searching on the internet for Nenita’s symptoms, and comes up with a likely cause. He takes that to the hospital to show the doctors, then returns and Mo allows Jun-Jun to stay with him while Nenita is in the hospital.

32: Langston sends a disguised email to the “Geo” character who hacked the Nanocom4 webinar, looking for information on them. He also learns that Amita is okay, but Puneet does not reveal anything else about what is going on.

33: Amita, accompanied by FBI Agent Brown and Teresa Conrad, travels to the underground lab in Texas. During the flight, Agent Brown reveals how the FBI got involved so quickly with Amita’s case: they had been aware that she was a hacker and were waiting for her to break US law. After arriving, Teresa and Amita meet Dr. Carol Thomas, aka “Dr. Carol,” who subjects them to an extremely sensitive brain scanner which can be used to confirm whether a person has a history of violence, or other dangerous tendencies. Dr. Carol tells Amita that she has passed the test, and may enter the lab, which she calls the “DOC Lab.”

34: Geo is not fooled by Langston’s disguised email.

35: An hour later, in the DOC Lab, Amita learns that Teresa Conrad’s brain scan shows that she has a previously undiagnosed tumor, but Teresa chooses to go into the lab anyway. They go down 300 feet to the lab, which turns out to be at the site of the SSC, an abandoned giant particle accelerator. There they meet Zed Roundtree, a well-known Artificial Intelligence researcher, whose death was faked so that he could be safely transported to this lab. DOC stands for Design Optimization Center, but their real task is designing Self-Improving General Intelligence, which Roundtree believes is extraordinarily powerful, but at the same time extraordinarily dangerous.

36: Langston travels to Salt Lake City where he meets with Puneet, and later Langston’s father, and learns more about Amita and his mother. We learn that Teresa’s tumor is malignant.

37: Langston tries again to contact Geo, and learns that they are an activist group trying to disrupt preparations for Kali. Geo describes the protocol that must be followed to learn anything further, which would involve publicly and provably carrying out an act against preparation efforts.

38: Jun-Jun runs into a lawyer from the big city, who shows up on his land and demands payment for the hospital treatment Nenita received. Jun-Jun and his brothers refuse, and the lawyer has his bodyguards severely beat Jun-Jun and his two brothers, who are left incapacitated by the attack.

39: Three weeks later, the man who brought the computers to the village returns with a suitcase filled with something that he says is better than money. Jun-Jun is angry and disillusioned, because in the aftermath of the attack, one of Jun-Jun’s brothers lost the use of his right hand, and the other brother was blinded. The man with the suitcase, Salvador Bitoon, explains that the suitcase contains a sizeable quantity of pills that can help Jun-Jun, (and Jun-Jun only), learn quickly. Ultimately Jun-Jun decides to take a pill, which he calls kinaadman in his language.

40: It is the one year anniversary of the President’s announcement of Kali. Langston receives a package from his sister, Gina, who the family has not heard from in over a year. Langston finds a letter from Gina, and some brownies. He eats a brownie, which causes him to experience pure, absolute ecstasy. Kate comes home a few minutes later and finds Langston in convulsions. She sees the letter and brownies, and realizes Langston has been poisoned. While Langston is taken to the hospital, Kate waits for the FBI to arrive, then finally she gets to the hospital, where she learns that Langston has died, and his body has been taken away by a military hazmat unit.

Book Two: Kinaadman

0: The President is asked about a major movement of nuclear materials, scientists, and engineers to a lab in Alaska. He insists that it is all for civilian purposes.

1: In the Philippines, Mo Pindoy, the café owner that Jun-Jun stayed with while his daughter was in the hospital, helps Jun-Jun plant spyware on a computer in the office of the lawyer who stole his land, Gilberto Quimada. Afterward, Jun-Jun tells Mo about MNI-3, and the incredible effect it has had on his life.

2: Mo sees Jun-Jun doing various things on the computer, and a couple of days later, Jun-Jun says he is going away somewhere. But he leaves Mo an envelope with a big stack of money in it.

3: Kate visits the FBI office in Detroit, where she is surprised to meet Langston’s father, George. Agent Brown fills them in on information about Langston’s death. There is evidence that his sister Gina did not actually send the brownies. Brown then tells them that they are needed at the lab in Texas, and they travel there.

4: Flashback 3 weeks earlier. We learn that Langston Conrad is alive, but seriously brain damaged, in the DOC Lab. His mother is there, as is Dr. Carol, who is working with him. He has incapacitating cravings to re-experience what happened after he ate the brownies.

5: Jun-Jun is in Singapore, where his brothers are receiving medical treatment for their beating injuries. Jun-Jun has arranged to meet one of the people who gave him MNI-3. He goes to a house where there is a 3D conference setup, and there he meets Steve, whose avatar looks like Ben Franklin. Jun-Jun seeks guidance about what to do, but Steve/Ben tells him to just go do something useful.

6: Amita, in the DOC Lab, meets Toma, the original developer of MNI-3. He has been transferred there for some reason unknown to him. He fills Amita in on more information about MNI-3, and how dangerous it has turned out to be. Later, we switch to Kate, who enters the lab in spite of her claustrophobia, still not knowing why she is there. Toma and Amita are in a meeting with various government agencies, to discuss TT, The Treatment, which is the drug that almost killed Langston. It turns out to be a nanocapsule system that is being widely used by anti-preps, and the government is asking Amita and Toma to take MNI-3, since it is known to be safe for them, and after enhancing, to try to quickly design an antidote for TT.

7: Kate learns Langston is alive, but not well. She visits him, but he is only interested in having her bring him more of the brownies.

8: In the Philippines, Mo Pindoy gets a visit from the lawyer Quimada and his thugs. They show Mo security camera photos of him and Jun-Jun, and threaten him. Mo gets word of this to Jun-Jun over email.

9: Jun-Jun and his brothers depart Singapore for home. His brothers have recovered from successful medical treatments. Jun-Jun tells the story of why Quimada wanted their land, and how he, Jun-Jun got the money to come to Singapore: He stole it from a money laundering operation Quimada was running for a Hong Kong crime organization. When the Lagahit brothers get to Cebu, they meet Quimada, who threatens them, but one of Jun-Jun’s brothers suddenly shows unexpected martial arts skills and incapacitates Quimada and his men. Jun-Jun takes Quimada’s phone and wallet, but lets him go.

10: In Livermore Labs in California, a Nanocom4 employee, Rod Mathies, is interrogated under the scanner and admits that, under threat to his family, he let unknown parties steal time on the government super computer.

11: In the DOC Lab, Amita discusses two approaches to protecting against The Treatment: TTB, a simple blocking agent, and Hedonic Tone Modulator, HTM, Amita’s favored approach which involves preventing large excursions up or down of the perception of hedonic tone. HTM does not completely block pleasure or pain, but it prevents it from incapacitating a person.

12: In the DOC Lab, Kate meets Presidential Science Advisor Quigley’s wife, and learns that he was also the victim of a TT attack. Later Kate gets through Langston’s fog by physical means, and he has a treatment breakthrough.

13: Agent Brown and his new partner, agent Mendoza, try to find who has been stealing time on the Nanocom4 supercomputer, but are not successful.

14: In Cebu, Jun-Jun tells Salvador that his brothers secretly took MNI-3, and for one brother it worked, and for the other it did nothing. He asks Salvador to arrange another meeting with Steve/Ben, because he wants to get more MNI-3 to give to more people.

15: We see a meeting of the people who are distributing MNI-3 to people like Jun-Jun. The all appear in a virtual meeting in avatar form. Steve/Ben passes along Jun-Jun’s request for more MNI-3, but the request is unanimously denied, except by one person, Hermes, who always wants to give it to anyone.

16: Tino Dédalo meets an old friend, Elia Cancilla, in the airport during Cancilla’s layover. Cancilla tells Tino about a project to build a Hall Weather Machine that would be controlled by open-source governance, and asks for time on Nanocom4’s supercomputer to help with the design.

17: Jun-Jun travels to Singapore to meet again with Steve/Ben, who tells Jun-Jun that his request for more MNI-3 was denied, and warns him that the Hong Kong crime organization will come after their money. They then have a wide-ranging conversation, which later turns out to be part of an effort on Jun-Jun’s part to geo-locate Steve/Ben.

18: In the DOC Lab, a test subject will be given TTB, then challenged with TT, in the first human test of The Treatment Blocker. The test fails, but we learn that Amita has provided Dr. Carol with an alternative: her HTM drug. That works, and the test subject is saved.

19: Langston undergoes surgery to repair the damage to his brain caused by the TT attack. The treatment is successful, and he seems to be back, better than ever.

20: Tino and Amalia Dédalo and Rod Mathies are given TTB, (which is in fact HTM), and they are told about a breakthrough in the Geo case. Geo turns out to be Alexander Topturov, someone Tino knew from post-grad work at Stanford several years before. His whereabouts are unknown.

21: Geo loads a container onto a ship in a small port on the Pacific coast of Central America, with instructions to go to a certain location 300 miles off the Oregon coast. We see him later in a disguised molecular manufacturing facility, where we see his prolific, murderous manufacturing apparatus.

22: Langston Conrad and Jerome Quigley work out some issues, and in a video clip we see that many people are calling for the end of preparations for Kali.

23: The President goes into the DOC Lab, and undergoes the scanning process. Dr. Carol learns that there is a secret project called Unyielding Resolve, about which the President asked her to test his ability to lie. The scanner easily detected his attempt. Langston and Puneet meet with the President, where he tells Langston that he wants him to go to a lab in Alaska to assist with the building of nuclear powered rockets. When Langston tells Kate about this, she reveals that she has already taken a position at a Tarsier preserve on Bohol, the same island in the Philippines where Jun-Jun lives.