In the indeterminate future in an unnamed western city, physical impediments to immortality have been overcome. The prospect of eternal life, however, presents a new problem: rejuvenated bodies require rejuvenated identities. To make the transition, traces of a person’s past are erased and new, complete fictions are implanted in their stead. On occasion, though, cracks emerge, and reminders of discarded lives seep through, thoughts from a previous existence burrowing in the conscious mind.
Doctor Frank Sina specializes in sealing these memory leaks. He is satisfied in his profession, more or less secure in the life he shares with his much younger lover, content with his own fiction. But one day, Presley Smith arrives in Frank's office. Persistent thoughts are torturing Presley, recurring images of another time and place. As Frank tries to save Presley from the onslaught of memory, cracks emerge in his own fiction, and the thoughts that sneak through suggest a connection between the two men that goes well beyond a doctor and his patient.