Point of Departure

A research-manager recounts how an unauthorized experiment, missing funds and vanished colleagues at a scientific foundation become tied to a cache of untranslated tablets describing an advanced pre-flood civilization. A persuasive outsider brings translations that claim the ancestors constructed a compact solar-power converter of enormous capability, and the attempt to replicate or control that technology draws suspicion, secrecy and mounting danger. The narrative tracks investigative interviews, corporate tensions and the slow unveiling of how a long-ago catastrophe may be repeating itself when modern scientists confront remnants of an ancient, potent engineering discovery.