Ethan Miles and his cousin Danielle are average middle grade kids until that Friday in October when they meet two visitors from Pluto. Turns out Plutonians have been living on Earth for centuries and they can preserve minds. For years they've been filling little bottles with the preserved minds of the greatest humans in history. They bring them out one at a time and put them in alien bodies. That's what they do for Benjamin Franklin. They match him to a young person - that's Ethan - and give him three days to live in the modern world. That was the plan, but as Ethan and Danielle find out, great minds don't always go along with the plan. Franklin runs away to Paris with the science teacher and things get worse from there. There's a kidnapping, a secret lab, a fire and - well, let's just say that not all aliens are good guys.