The TV People show up on a Sunday evening in spring. The man doesn’t like Sunday evenings because every week this is when his head begins to hurt and his vision becomes distorted. This is why the TV People choose Sunday evening to come around. These people look like the average person, but are slightly reduced in size, and they wear slick dark blue jackets. Three of them sneak into the man’s apartment that night and carry in a TV with them. 

When they enter, he is lying on the sofa and staring at the ceiling. His wife is out with her high school friends, so he is all alone in the apartment. The people ignore him and plug in the brand-new TV, making a mess in the process. The TV doesn’t pick up a signal and displays a blank screen, but this doesn’t bother the people and they position it towards the man on the couch. Then, they turn the set off and leave. 

Through all of this commotion, the man never moves and just watches the people come and go from his home. Their failure to acknowledge his presence makes him feel as though he might be invisible and he checks his hands to make sure he exists. He finds that he does, but he still feels powerless until they finally leave. 

When his wife returns, she does not acknowledge the TV set or how her magazines are scattered on the floor — a sight that would normally send her into a rage. Instead, she is unnaturally calm while she makes him dinner. She tells him about the gossip from her night, but her husband hears almost none of it because he’s thinking about the TV People. After dinner, he turns the TV on but there is still no connection. He turns the set off and goes to read a book but finds it difficult to focus. 

Around 2:30 a.m., the man wakes up to find the TV still there and still not working. He gives up and begins to read his wife’s magazine. Around 6 a.m., she gets up and later they both go to work. In his advertising office building, the man passes a TV Person on the stairs, who was possibly one of the three who was at his house last night. He thinks about talking to the person but they ignore him completely again. At work, he participates enough to matter, but his head is somewhere else entirely, thinking of the TV People. 

In an afternoon meeting, he sees two of the TV People again. They enter to room carrying a Sony Color TV, a rival brand in the office. They parade the TV around the room, but carry it back out the door after finding no place to set it down. The man follows a colleague out to the bathroom and when he asks him about the TV People, the colleague gives no reply and averts his eyes for the rest of the day. 

When the man gets home that evening, it is dark and raining outside. He tries again to turn on the TV, but this time it doesn’t even display a blank screen but just stays off and cold. Wondering where his wife is, he reads the newspaper instead and falls asleep. In his dreams, he is delivering a statement in a meeting. Everyone around him is dead and turned to stone, and if he stops talking he will die, too. The TV People are there, carrying the Sony TV with the screen displaying footage of them. He begins to run out of words to say and gradually feels his body turn to stone. 

He opens his eyes and finds the room lit up by the TV screen, which displays flickering static. Then, just like in the dream, one of the TV People appears on the screen, the same person the man passed on the stairs earlier that day. The person stares at the man through the screen, growing larger and larger until finally he steps through the TV set into the man’s living room. The man shuts his eyes, hoping he’s dreaming, but he’s wide awake. 

The TV Person tells the man that they are making an airplane, and behind him the TV displays news-report-style footage of TV People working in a factory. In a voice that’s not his own, the man tells the TV Person that the machine doesn’t look like an airplane. The TV Person tries to argue but the man gives up his criticism and chooses to watch the screen behind the person. 

The TV Person then tells the man it’s a shame about his wife. When the man asks him what they mean, the person ominously replies that “it’s gone too far: she’s out there.” The man goes into the kitchen, grabs a beer from the fridge, and returns to the sofa. He cannot bring himself to believe that his wife is gone. He continues to watch the people on screen build their contraption, and the longer he watches the more it begins to look like an airplane. The TV Person in his living room watches him intently. 

The man looks down at his palms and finds that they’ve shrunk and the TV Person tells him that the phone will ring soon. He wonders if it’s his wife and starts to say something, but when he stands up to reach the phone the prepared words slip from his memory.