The Earth has been struck with an environmental catastrophe that threatens all forms of life on the planet. Freezing cold and a poisonous atmosphere endanger plant and animal life equally. With only a few short years from discovery of the approaching disaster to implementing some kind of survival plan, most of the world's population has been caught without a viable plan for survival.
Surprisingly, New York, Washington, Chicago and the other major cities of the United States continue on as if the populations are blissfully unaware of the situation. People's focus is more directly centered on the day-to-day events that affect the lives of themselves and their families.
Washington DC Detective Mike Lee is one such person, focused on finding an explanation as to how the murderers of one of the nation's most senior Senators could have simply vanished from the crime scene under the noses of both him and his quick action team. Even the bodies of those attackers they had managed to kill in their failed attempt to save the Senator have simply disappeared.
A related event occurs in Chicago where gunmen target an infamous criminal leader, again with surprising access to supposedly secure areas. Forewarned, the gangster's men repel the attackers, killing all involved in the attempt, but the dead gunmen mysteriously vanish in much the same manner the police had observed on the East Coast several weeks earlier.
Unexpectedly, an answer is offered from a LA Police Detective who had learned of both events. Sgt. Sammi Donaldson comes to Washington with an unbelievable story. To begin with, Detective Lee is being told that that current date isn't 2083 that he and everyone else knows damn well is the current year. For some reason, Detective Donaldson and those she brings with her, would have him believe it is more than a thousand years in the future. Even harder to accept than the impossible date, is their insistence that the world he knows, and believes he is living in, no longer exists. They tell him that he is only some kind of copy of his real-world self, being kept safe against a future time when the Earth can be re-inhabited. And for good measure, they tell him that his real self is long since deceased, victim to a world extinction event that has essentially killed everything on the planet.
The problem is, his visitors have some pretty compelling evidence that what they claim is true. Detective Donaldson also warns that without Lee's help, the perpetrator who killed the Senator will continue to act, committing additional murders, and might possibility even cause the artificial reality he is living in to fail. To make the story even more interesting, they claim that this killer can't be killed in this environment, only temporarily delayed from pursuing his agenda of murder.
What choice does Lee have but to go along? Maybe, by doing so, somewhere along the way he'll find some of the answers he desperately seeks.