Oscar, a bike shop owner, has recently taken sole proprietorship of the business after his partner Fred left. Fred left because Oscar would constantly rent out bikes to single women going to the park and would ride along with them, leaving Fred all day. Fred and Oscar have very different personalities: Fred is thoughtful and awkward, Oscar brash and self-centered. One day, an athletic woman comes into the shop and Oscar takes her bike to fix it without asking, then tries to go out with her on a ride. She laughs and says he can't keep up with her racer, so Oscar takes Fred's special racing bike he's been working on for months without asking and brings it back hours later dirty and misused. Fred destroys the bike there and then. The two don't speak for weeks until one day, Fred walks in and the bike is perfectly repaired with all of his custom enhancements too. Oscar thinks Fred did it, but Fred is shocked. He believes the bike regenerated itself. And believes that all objects that disappear when you need them most (like safety pins) turn into objects you have too much of without expected (like clothes hangers). Oscar thinks Fred is crazy. But Fred is insistent, that metal objects begin their larval stage as safety pins, then go into pupal stage as clothing hangers, and reach maturity as bikes, which explains why cops always find random bikes everywhere but no owners. Oscar forces Fred to ride the bike so he can see that he's crazy, but Fred believes the bike threw him on purpose and declares he must warn all of humanity about the menace of these transforming metal objects.

Back in the present moment, Oscar is engaged to Norma, the woman with the racing bike. He has lots of French/American style hybrid racing bikes, unique to his shop and built like the one Fred was working on. And Fred was found just a while ago dead in his closet with a metal coat hanger wrapped around his neck.