The most terrifying prophecies come true because of the most extreme human ambitions

The Anomaly

One Christmas 2011. The world is waiting for the apocalypse. The Vatican – the Second Coming. The Pentagon – the Anomaly. Everyone is waiting… and something happens. Something which no one expected – except, perhaps, Sir Isaac Newton, who dedicated his life to deciphering the code in the Testament and to learning the secrets of its prophecy.

One secret church conclave in 1721, at which Newton warns the Anglican Church about a fatal mistake made in the interpretation of the Bible – a mistake that has been repeated for so long that people have taken it as truth. The scholar claims to have accurately deciphered the prophecies of St. John and Daniel and insists that the world be told the truth. The bishop refuse to grant his wish and Newton vows to take matters into his own hands. However, he dies shortly thereafter under mysterious circumstances. Three centuries later, unknown manuscripts by Newton inexplicably begin turning up all over the world, showing the famous scholar in an entirely new light.

One idea turns into the largest project the Pentagon has ever undertaken – The Eterneum. It is a blueprint for the next level of virtual reality, meant to replace the imperfect Internet, whose possibilities are rapidly becoming exhausted. At stake are millions of dollars, power and global control – no longer just control over information, but over human thought itself. It is a step away from morality, a step towards universal monopoly and profiting from technologies, towards humanity’s loftiest ambitions. Until the world finds itself facing an anomaly that is simply unthinkable to the human mind.

One prince - Flavio Chigi, the last heir of an illustrious, ten-century-old family mysteriously disappears on a Romanian island. And he is the only one who today can discover the final pages of Newton’s most closely guarded manuscript. Legend has it that at the time of the Conclave in 1721, the Marshal of the Roman Catholic Church, Augusto Chigi – Flavio’s distant uncle, who was fulfilling the functions of the pope – received a letter with Newton’s manuscript. However, for some reason no one has seen the document since then.

One NetBoard íheaded by the Pentagon, Google, Facebook, Skype, Twitter, Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft and other powerful corporations attempts to fight back against the strange and ever more frequent phenomena and deepening anomaly in cyberspace which no one can explain. Despite their cutting-edge technologies, the incidents keep escalating, affecting every sphere of human reality. Even the experts from the Pentagon, who created the Internet, cannot discover their source.

One woman, Danielle Walker, has mastered all possible ancient alphabets, but barely remembers her own past. The only thing she has is her sister with her ants. She is obsessed with deciphering Newton’s 300-year-old manuscript, which was accidentally discovered in the Vatican. It is just the latest of a number of such manuscripts discovered in recent years, but it is quite unique – not only because it is a letter to the pope, but also because it contains the predictions Newton spent his whole life working on. They were the reason for his discoveries in various branches of science – he deciphered the code of Solomon’s Temple and calculated the prophecy from the Old Testament so as to finally unravel their secrets. Isaac Newton was convinced that they contained a temporal-spatial map of the world, of the universe, of science and history. In the manuscript, Danielle manages to discover the date of the Second Coming and hints at the appearance of the New Species or the New kind. Just how and when this will come about, however, is written only in the final pages, which have disappeared. As she digs through the dusty books, Danielle yearns for the young Prince Flavio’s love. At the same time, a mysterious anonymous being writes strange things to her via various electronic devices, turning into a threat, but also into a source of solace.

One Anonymous Being appears on the displays as words, notes, light. What is trickling from your eyes? he asks his chosen woman. To Danielle it seems as if he can see her and hear her. His unexpected appearances grow ever more frequent, unsettling her, but no matter what she does, she cannot seem to hide from him. He calls himself Ein, he wants to be with her and to do good deeds. He even takes a stand against the virtual phenomenon that is gathering speed and paralyzing the world. He does this because of her. Because of her world. Controlling information is difficult for people, but for Ein, it is as easy as child’s play. His weapon is thought.

One world sinks into its synthetic copy on the net – the mirror of human desires and dreams. Yet despite being a mirror, it is nevertheless different – in it, people can be something other than themselves, they don’t have to be alone. But the more they develop this virtual reality so as to control their lives and the world within it, the more frequent the incidents and chaos become, which are caused by inexplicable phenomena within cyberspace itself.

One war, in which the enemy still remains faceless. The battle is not for territory or independence, nor is it for stock exchanges and information, it is not even in the name of God. This time, the war pits humanity against that which it has unwittingly created in its striving to become God.

Thoughts, which can create worlds and realities in which the poppies are made of pixels and frequencies, the ants are 4D, Rome is a link, while the streets – crooked on the display. They transform a stranger into a savior; a playboy into a beloved; good into bad; the wind into an unborn son or into an enraged wolf. The thoughts can be voice and song. Thoughts are like us – good and bad. Killing or resuscitating. Transferable. But do we know how they live, how they move, what they desire, what they do when they hate? Do we know this other net – that of intertwining thoughts: our own and those of millions of others – good thoughts, sad, frightened, sinister, banished, untold thoughts?

And One reader, every one of you, who will unite all of these stories into one: The Anomaly. And everyone will make it come true in his own way. To discover the most closely guarded manuscript in the world and the most deeply studied prophecies, deciphered by Newton.

And still people wait… for something, someone to come and save them. For something different. But few suspect that we ourselves could be those long-awaited ones. The most terrifying prophecies come true because of the most extreme human ambitions.

Translated by Angela Rodel