A graduate student and obsessive runner in New York is drawn into a mysterious plot involving his brother, a member of the secretive Division.

Ruby Dennis is an middle-aged man with an unfulfilled ambition as a singer. As he begins to pursue that ambition, his family falls apart.

Jefferson City, Missouri: Joseph Randolph, a VIP in a fictional electronics company, has just gotten the sack. The company bigwigs insist it is simply because of downsizing, but Randolph is not buying it. Enraged, he gets a handgun and shoots five managers to death. Then he turns himself in and is eventually put in a psychiatric hospital by the police. His family suffers a series of tragedies that leave only his daughter to wonder about why her father was committed to an institution. She joins with a visiting reporter from Chicago and another interested man, and all three start digging deeper into the company's history.

The love-struck couple Mitzi and Hal are expelled from school after a prom, where Hal stayed behind and hid in a closet and was found dressed as a girl.