Committed to the Alpine Grove asylum for a murder he didn’t commit, brain-damaged war veteran Jack Starks is subjected to sensory deprivation in a straightjacket, which sends him fifteen years into the future for several hours at a time where he meets the adult version of Jackie, a small girl whom he briefly met and was kind to shortly before being incarcerated. He learns from Jackie that back in the asylum he has only a few days to live, and together, he and Jackie try to figure out a way to escape that fate.

The story is loosely based on Jack London’s The Star Rover, although London’s protagonist travels through the stars and into past lives. Using future information to change the present was never part of London’s story.