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Visiting his favorite bar, Clocker tells about his wife, and the catatonic state she’s in. Doctors claim there’s no hope, but he’s sure he has the key to healing her. Zelda is a dancer, and the only thing she’s able to do is tap out a simple time step. Will his theories applied to betting on the horses , also help in pulling his wife out of her condition?
Deep in thought, and zoning out in his endless concentration, Clocker finds himself on a different mental plane. Others are there. Have they died? A speaker who seems to be in charge tells them they have all been chosen for a personal skill. An alien race is interested in impressing the human knowledge indelibly on an artificial brain, and preserved forever.
Clocker finds Zelda, but she isn’t as eager to leave the project to preserve humanity, in case the world should go boom in a huge atomic explosion. He doesn’t care about being preserved. He only wants his wife back. Even when Clocker is allowed to go back, his warnings of the end of the world are ignored. Or are they? In his own way he has helped the alien project, and helped the human race to carry on.
