Investigative reporter Andrew Worth turns down a documentary on a mysterious new mental illness
“Distress,” or acute clinical anxiety syndrome, for another assignment. He’s on his way to the artifical
island of Stateless, where the world’s top physicists are gathering to decide on a new TOE, or Theory
of Everything, to replace Einstein’s outmoded legacy.
Chief among the scientists is the brilliant African Nobel laureate, Violet Mosala, the focus of Worth’s
story, who is the subject of mysterious death threats. Worth begins his own investigation, but it takes
on even more urgency when he finds that Distress, the mental plague now affecting millions, is linked
somehow to the approaching “Aleph Moment” when the TOE is finalized. The countdown has begun
for a disaster that will reach all the way back to the Big Bang. And beyond…