Distress

It is 2055. The world is far better - and infinitely worse. Investigative reporter Andrew Worth turns down a documentary on a mysterious new mental illness - Distress or acute clinical anxiety syndrome. Instead, he travels on assignment to the artificial 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. Trying to track them down, Worth meets a compellingly attractive asex (ungendered person) who reveals the secret behind the conference. There are those who believe that it is the TOE itself that brings the Universe into existence, and that the person who formulates it is the Keystone, without whom there would be no Universe to explain! Worth's assignment 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...