Alexander Nikolaevich Sannikov (to his friends - simply Lex) is an outstanding epigeneticist, who, with a light hand and a fleeting phrase from a student talented to the point of genius, exchanged his academic career for an uncertain future. To his greatest surprise, the program for the development of a new, newly discovered silicon-organic world needs his, Lex, talents. And the head of its scientific direction is none other than that splinter bespectacled guy who inadvertently ruined his life and is now putting it back together.