In late middle age, the narrator, Emily Bethel, learns that she is unlikely to live for more than another two years. Her family and her doctor advise her to adopt a life without worry or strong emotions, but that is anathema to her. She would rather have one week in the future, enabling her to see the outcome of the social and intellectual movements of her time, than two uneventful and boring years in the present. Her doctor, who is evidently something of a master of occult learning, grants her wish, and she finds herself in the London of 1988. A travel diary between confirmations and incredible discoveries.