Synopsis/Details
It is the middle of Great Lent. Father Daniel Greer receives a letter from the bishop regarding an upcoming commemoration. Santiago finds a strange piece of debris while preparing a field for planting. The young boys, Peter and Ephraim, find additional pieces with unfamiliar symbols on them. As they're showing what they found to Santiago, the village's power inverter fails, causing a power outage. Santiago and Luke take the remains of it to their electrical engineer emeritus, "Ma" Zhang, who pronounces that it cannot be fixed. Instead, she offers to teach the older kids how to build a new one. Fr. Greer visits the monks living nearby to tell them about the bishop's letter. One monk, Moses, is not present and he is informed that Moses is working on a difficult project. Later that evening, Peter tells his mother, Ia, about the object he found. He draws out the symbols he saw, and Ia realizes that they are the Chinese characters for "China."
The next day, a small airplane flies overhead and the pilot is forced to land in a field after his engine develops a problem. Santiago diagnoses the problem while the pilot, Jack, has lunch with Fr. Greer and his wife. He tells them that he was flying from Evansville, Indiana, to survey the area in preparation for reopening a railway that passes through Pokrov. Later, the newly-built inverter is hooked up to the grid and the power is restored. Jack's plane requires a part they don't have, so he is stuck there for at least a night.
The next day, Santiago takes Jack to the neighboring village of New Plymouth to look for a spark plug for the plane. Peter and Ephraim go looking for more pieces of the object and come across a cabin containing some electronic scrap and a cryptic Bible reference carved into the wall. Santiago and Jack don't find what they need in New Plymouth, but they do find another power inverter, which Jack buys for Santiago. While the residents are at vespers, Jack radios back to Evansville for assistance.
The following day, Sunday, Fr. Greer serves the Divine Liturgy and at the end, reads the letter he received from the bishop. Here, we learn about the upcoming fiftieth Commemoration of the Innumerable Dead, to be observed on October 14, 2085--fifty years after modern civilization was destroyed in a nuclear war. That night, Cain, the owner of the mysterious cabin, returns to the abbot, warning him of a coming danger.
