An investigator seeking the cause of an airline disaster discovers the involvement of an organisation of time travellers from a future Earth irreparably polluted who seek to rejuvenate the human race from those about to die in the past. Based on a novel by John Varley.

Ted is an entrepreneur whose hopes of selling 10,000 automatized ashtrays are scattered away after his buyer died. The story revolves around dozen of people whose lives are intertwined around Ted's Sisyphean attempts to return the money of a loan shark whose services he had to seek for.

Penfield Gruber, a once great scientist, is reduced to managing a sleazy hotel. He monitors the daily comings and goings of his tenants, mainly for his own interest, until underworld figures ask him to spy on a suspected double-crosser. While watching the man, Gruber overhears a murder plot.