To get one over on her husband, molecular biologist Leo Kaminski, Lydia Kaminski-Smith sets about cultivating bacteria that decompose waste and thus solve the garbage problem. Some insatiable microbes turn paper into sugar. Once released, nothing is safe from them - not books, letters or files. Everything turns to sugar. The sweet catastrophe progresses inexorably...

The wife of a reporter, who turned up missing while investigating reports of illegal toxic dumping, teams up with a photographer to find her husband.