Volume I - Episode 57 Where: Jerusalem, Israel When: 2 years and 21 days before E-Day, 6:26 pm The next defining moment in Roni Ben-nun’s life came at precisely 6:26 pm on Wednesday the 16th of July, 2008. And it was the big one - the one that she had been waiting all of her life for. The hours leading up to it had been exceptionally ordinary. She had finished work at 5 pm, caught the bus home, and quickly cobbled together a tuna salad for dinner. By 6:15 pm she was huddled over her laptop on the couch, indulging in her daily love affair with facts and figures about the mysterious ancient wall in far eastern Russia. This was her passion. This was the time she looked forward to each and every day. Her current obsession was studying old maps of the city's perimeter. It was an area of research she had begun six months earlier, almost on a whim, but she had quickly discovered she was onto something truly spectacular. The months of painstaking research had finally led to a breakthrough; a result that was fascinatingly unexpected...and, she had to admit it, deeply disturbing. She had stayed up all night, filled with excitement, blogging about her findings. Her blog was something of a cathartic release for her, an outlet for her obsessive studying and research. She knew virtually nobody ever read her work, and if asked, she would say she didn't mind. But deep down, it hurt. It hurt to be so passionate about work that nobody else would care about or understand. It just made her feel more and more isolated from the rest of humanity. Ping! Roni clicked her tongue as The "New email" notification popped up on her laptop, annoyed at the interruption. She opened her email client and quickly scanned the thirty or so unread emails she had received that day - mostly advertisements for penis enlargement, peppered here and there with alerts from the dozens of Gorod Drevnih news groups and mailing lists that she had subscribed to over the years. But three emails caught her attention - there had been three comments on last night's groundbreaking blog entry. Finally! she thought. Excited, she connected to her blog and scrolled down to read the comments. The first was from one of her co-workers, Asaf Inbar. Asaf was a sweet and charming young man who spent most of his days following Roni around the university library, asking endless questions about Gorod Drevnih. While she enjoyed his curiosity, she had no idea whether he was truly interested in the magically-veiled city or if he was just bored and lonely. She knew that most of her research was well above his head, but nevertheless, she appreciated his enthusiasm.

Asaf Inbar: great! very interesting! ur so clever Roni xx

She smiled and made a mental note to thank him in the morning. The next two comments were obviously, unfortunately, fake. The first was entered at 9:30 in the morning:

Prof. Dennis Adams: Compelling reading! Great research. Good. Very good!

Professor Adams - the real Professor Adams - was the lead scientist of Project Enigma, the famously well-funded research group comprised of the world's foremost experts in Gorod Drevnih architecture and archaeology. They had research stations dotted around the ancient wall that kept watch and conducted experiments all year round. Virtually every serious theory and piece of scientific data that had ever been published about Gorod Drevnih had originated from one of those stations; the most famous being Clark Station, overlooking The Brink itself. It was from near that station, in 1967, that two American tourists had caught and filmed the world's first and only glimpse of what lay beyond the ancient wall. [CONTINUED BELOW]