A Los Angeles speech pathologist is assigned to the case of a presumably mentally-ill woman who speaks in gibberish that turns out to be Old English. When the woman disappears, deciphering her mysterious writing leads the pathologist to wonder if she has stumbled across a time traveler.

A wealthy but sad merchant meets a man in the City of Peace who tells him of a gate that will allow the merchant to step twenty years into the past and visit his former self. He travels back in time and learns that nothing can erase the past.