Tom, our narrator, is a stranger in an intellectual community whose members experience the world by wondering how things are made and how they might be made differently.


Instead of characters undergoing dramatic changes, Tom's life in this world is defined by the changing plans for these things- objects that might help people overcome injuries, virtual reality experiences that induce profound nostalgia about memories, ambiguous and ordinary robots, and failed services intended to replace the function of mirrors. Tom's job is to tell stories about the work going on in this intellectual community and to look for the unacknowledged storytelling that is already part of the world. Many of the stories Tom hears and observes involve types of people called clients, consumers and designers - all figures who in this story are bound together by the common thread of trying to make visions and aspirations tangible.

Tom listens and watches people pour their practical and imaginative energies into plans for thing-projects and in the process gives centre stage to a pervasive but oddly inconspicuous aspect of what it means to be human in the world today