The world community of scientists has been unsuccessfully struggling for two centuries to decipher the mysterious manuscript ms 408. According to legend, Roger Bacon, a Franciscan monk of the 13th century, imprisoned for fifteen years for dangerous ideas, managed to find the answer to the main question of existence. And it was this that he encrypted in his manuscript. Marcus Colleron, an FBI special agent, encounters a strange phenomenon in his work: for no reason, completely healthy and strong men fall into a strange stupor, close to a coma, and soon die. Doctors just shrug their shoulders. The only thing these people have in common is a passion for collecting ancient tomes.