Logline
On the eve of the Civil War, a young John D. Rockefeller draws two industrial magnates into a secret quest beneath the forests of upstate New York, where an ancient source of knowledge promises unimaginable power — and reveals why some truths are better left buried.
Synopsis
Ithaca, New York, 1860. America is coming apart, but three men destined to help build its future are about to discover something far older — and potentially more powerful — than the country itself.
Twenty-one-year-old John D. Rockefeller arrives in Ithaca with little money, enormous ambition and mysterious notebooks filled with symbols and equations born from otherworldly encounters near his childhood home.
He seeks out telegraph entrepreneur Ezra Cornell and financial pioneer Henry Wells, proposing a worldwide network of commerce, communications and influence. Cornell is intrigued. Wells is skeptical. But Rockefeller’s notebooks lead the three men to an ancient Tree of Knowledge and evidence of a secret that has surfaced repeatedly throughout civilization.
They form the Cayuga Pact, an oath to pursue the truth and protect what they discover.
As America moves toward war, their quest reveals a terrifying pattern: civilizations have found this knowledge before, exploited its power — and destroyed themselves with it.
Cornell, Wells and Rockefeller ultimately face a choice: possess the knowledge or protect the world from it.
They bury it.
History moves on. Cornell builds his university. Wells expands his financial empire. Rockefeller becomes one of the richest and most consequential men in American history.
But the knowledge survives.
In present-day Cornell University, student Stella Navigo discovers Rockefeller’s mysterious symbols appearing in her own notebook.
The past hasn’t disappeared.
It has been waiting.