Attention! This is the Mandatory Eight O'Clock News! All adult citizens tune in to the government information program! The famous scientist, member of the Academy of Sciences, Professor Leonard Picton, has disappeared. The creator of brain chips and discoverer of undifferentiated antimatter went for a walk today and did not return home. All versions are being considered: amnesia, accident, kidnapping...” Thomas Drimm is not yet thirteen, so he can turn away from the television screen - he will not face a fine. In addition, the boy knows perfectly well where to look for Professor Picton, because he is the unwitting culprit of his disappearance. But there is no way to admit this... But Thomas cannot escape the pangs of conscience - he finds himself in the center of a grandiose intrigue of a scientist who now needs his help to save humanity from his own invention. Didier van Covelaert (born in 1960) - winner of the Goncourt Prize , author of two dozen novels and scripts for several French and Hollywood films. He is traditionally interested in three topics: the impact of technology on society, human psychology under stress, and life after death. In the series of dystopias about Thomas Drimm, which opens with the novel “The End of the World Comes on Thursday,” all these motives are effectively intertwined, and another, new for the writer, motive of the hero’s growing up is added.