Five more seemingly unconnected instances of music impacting on normally staid citizens follow after this opening chapter. A librarian's desktop computer catches fire after it starts playing the music from a dream she had, and mysteriously bringing the dream to life as a video. In the dream a library filled with ancient scrolls containing the wisdom of the world is destroyed. A widower inherits his wife's tom cat and penchant for haunting secondhand stores. One day he brings home a music box that he very carefully winds in the hopes that it still plays. Meanwhile the cat has climbs into the box in which the music box was packed. Mysteriously when he comes out he is a she and time has shifted. For when the widower follow his "new cat" into the living room, he sees a younger version of himself, his wife, and children sitting around the dinner table; a scene which persists until the music box runs down.

A staid, middle class matron finds herself having to make an unwanted train trip in the middle of the winter to visit her sick sister. When the train is delayed by the weather the music of a hurdy-gurdy played by an old gypsy gives her visions of the future which show disasters happening to her fellow passengers. A painter paints a series of paintings while listening to a band playing in the park, and when he hangs them on his wall at home they appear to form a pattern, a puzzle that no matter how long he stares at he just can't quite solve.

What is there about the music that is causing these seemingly different people to all connect with something beyond reality and to have visions outside their own time, or glimpses of the pattern that makes up life. Yet if we look closely at these people they do have something in common; in one way or another they are all imprisoned by a routine or a lifestyle that seemingly has cut them off from the outside world. The autistic child lives in his head, the librarian is trapped by the routine of a marriage gone stale, the widower has refused to engage the world for years, the old lady in the waiting room has cut herself off from everyone, and the painter has lived according to a rigid, self-imposed, schedule since his retirement.

In each case the music seeps through their defences and elicits responses that in most instances throw their carefully ordered world into disarray. With the exception of the autistic child, because we can not know how he reacts, each of the other individuals has their view of the world radically altered. Lids that have been jammed onto emotions for years begin to pop their rivets, much to the individual's consternation.