This was the time of Faraday, Ohm, Oersted and Volta - men of science who had not yet become units of measurement. This was the time of Cagliostro, Saint Germain, Jung the Silent and Eliphas Levi - magicians and charlatans, famous and obscure. Congreve's rockets fell on Copenhagen, Europe remembered the iron hand of Napoleon, the forbidden order of the Illuminati was hiding in the shadows; The Opium War was brewing in China. In the distant future, a laboratory labyrinth quietly gurgled, deciding the fate of humanity: from troglodytes to metamorphs. And the gears of the Mechanism of Time - the double helix of centuries - were spinning. Mysticism versus science - who will win? The new novel by G. L. Oldie and Andrei Valentinov is a magnificent example of an adventurous tradition, densely mixed with original ideas. All the books written in this co-authorship have long become the golden fund of science fiction, and Alumen, perhaps, will not be an exception.