Ian Ross has lived his whole, unfulfilling life in Chicago. He works a dead-end job and lives alone in a tiny apartment. One day, however, he decides to make real his life-long dream: he moves to Scotland. After a long trip, he pulls off the road deep in the hills of Perth and stares down at the Loch. He realizes that he has still done nothing; he does not belong here. The sky around Ian begins to bleach. He sees ghostly figures move around him. When he stands, there is nothing below or above him, just nothingness. He remembers his life in vivid detail. As he travels the gray space, Ian eventually encounters an old man, who tells him of his theory about where they are: the space of unused time. Humans who have wasted their lives are sucked into this space; they had nothing to anchor them to their own time. The ghostly figures swirling past them — ancient animals, scenes from the Battle of Waterloo and the Paris Revolution — are parts of the time-flow that was wasted. Ian wanders the space of wasted time until he encounters a woman named Catherine. Ian and Catherine talk; they sleep together; they spend years together and navigate this strange non-landscape. They realize that they are in love. And then, slowly, they each begin to evaporate. Their bodies become transparent. Ian and Catherine have learned to use their time together, and so they no longer belong in this place of wasted time. They disappear completely from one another.