January 1, 2000, a Shinto healer fresh off the plane from Japan delivers an ancient, world-saving scroll to the UN, only to discover that on January 1, the United Nations is closed. Wise in the ways of the universe but unschooled in the ways of New York, the healer, the most balanced man in the city, manages to attract all the most-distracted, least-balanced people around: Chrissie Luna, the metaphysical makeup artist with the ticking biological clock, Reverend Y, the African-American ex-heavyweight contender turned spiritual leader of the Church of Apocalypse, Profanity-Allowed, and Karl-Heinz Retter, the suicidal Swiss dwarf dog-walker with dreams of world hegemony... The prophecy said that the scroll would be unveiled when the time was right, when things couldn't get much worse. The only question: how much worse did they have to get?