The year is 1999. On the road to Paris and trapped in a traffic jam as the inhabitants of major cities flee the news of an out-of-control nuclear satellite, a disillusioned woman, Claire Tourneur, encounters Trevor McPhee, a mysterious stranger who is on a dangerous secret mission for his scientist father. When he suddenly disappears, Claire embarks on an obsessive search for him that takes her to the far corners of the earth.
The film is part mystery, part science-fiction. The device that the stranger carries is at first a mysterious object, and its strong attraction to various government agencies and bounty hunters is unexplained. When the disaster feared from the beginning does strike the planet, as an out-of-control nuclear satellite is shot down in orbit, the device becomes a comfort and an addiction for humanity, stripped as they are of their usual electronic conveniences after the satellite's destruction.
