The story opens in a small, shabby Cape Cod where Anna Hollings lives with her son Clinton. Clint, an unemployed college dropout in his mid-thirties, dreams of nothing but going back to school. So much so, in fact, that he's constructed a temporal portal generator that will whisk him back and let him relive his glory days. He especially wants to correct one decades-old mistake that he sees as the turning point for him--the very reason, he feels, his whole life has gone to hell since leaving Fulkes University.
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It seems he hurt a lot of people in the past, and isn't particularly well-liked at FU. His former "friends" each recall incidences that, when pieced together, show a not-too-pretty puzzle. Meantime, Clint spends more and more time visiting and revisiting his own personal highlight reel, and is slowly losing his already tenebrous touch with reality.