Summary Knowing 2009
M.I.T. professor John Koestler links a mysterious list of numbers from a time capsule to past and future disasters and sets out to prevent the ultimate catastrophe.
In the fall of 1959, for a time capsule, students draw pictures of life as they imagine it will be in 50 years. Lucinda, an odd child who hears voices, swiftly writes a long string of numbers. In 2009, the capsule is opened; student Caleb Koestler gets Lucinda's "drawing" and his father John, an astrophysicist and grieving widower, takes a look. He discovers dates of disasters over the past 50 years with the number who died. Three dates remain, all coming soon. He investigates, learns of Lucinda, and looks for her family. He fears for his son, who's started to hear voices and who is visited by a silent stranger who shows him a vision of fire and destruction. What's going on?
What will the world look like 50 years from now? That was the question back in 1959, when the pupils of an elementary school were asked to contribute their ideas on paper for the school's time capsule. The years have passed, and now, in the same school, Caleb Koestler, the son of John, a widowed astrophysicist, attends the event of the time capsule opening and receives a dull drawing consisted of mysterious and random numbers. It seems that the author was Lucinda Embry, a troubled child whose mind was riddled with whispers and strange voices and now her paper is in Caleb's hands. Intrigued by this inexplicable conundrum, John will attempt to decipher the string of numbers which seem to be references to dates and death tolls over a period of the last 50 years, with the concluding three sets of numbers pointing to the imminent future. In the end, with Caleb's mental health quickly deteriorating as he too is bombarded by the voices inside his mind and the increasing visions of biblical disasters, how could a single father help his troubled child and the rest of the world?
In 1959, a group of primary school students draw pictures for a time capsule of what they think the world will look like in 2009. One of the children, Lucinda Wayland, doesn't draw a picture but completes a long list of numbers. In 2009, the school opens the capsule and distribute the pictures to the students with Caleb Koestler getting the page with all the numbers. Caleb's father John, a university professor and astrophysicist, is intrigued and in managing to decipher the code, realizes that the numbers represent the date, location and number of people killed in major catastrophes, some natural and others man-made. He also sees that there are 3 disasters that have yet to occur. Lucinda Wayland has died but John contacts her daughter Diana and together they try to warn officials of what is coming. The last of the three disasters may be unstoppable however.
In the year 1959, a frightened and disturbed little girl named Lucinda was in school when her class was drawing up pictures for the school's time capsule, but Lucinda drew up a weird system of numbers and even was scratching at the school janitor's door. Now, 50 years later, John Koestler an astronomer and a professor at MIT is at his son, Caleb's school to open up the time capsule and was given Lucinda's system of numbers. When John was looking at the numbers, he quickly realized that it was some type of code that predicted the month, date and year of a specific disaster, and how many people died in that particular disaster. After witnessing a plane crash at Logan International Airport, and saving people from a freak New York Subway accident, John realizes that the last disaster on the code is the end of the world when one of the Sun's solar flares will scorch the Earth. Meanwhile, Caleb witnesses strange people who stalk him, and a little girl named Abby and her mother named Diana. Now, John and his son Caleb along with Abby and Diana must save as many people as they can from the Sun's solar flares while trying to find out about the strange people.