What begins as a stroll on an overcast day turns into an apocalyptic experience for a group of visitors to a laboratory. When a telescope's particle-light beam slices across their paths, each one of them enters a dreamlike odyssey that exposes their innermost hopes, dreams, and terrifying fears. As emergency workers desperately scramble to rescue the victims from the charred wreckage, their souls begin an incredible journey through one fantastic nightmare world after another. One of the victims, Jack Hamilton, realizes something the others do that in each strange new world they are trapped by forces utterly beyond those that govern the real world, forces that may never set them free.