Microbiologist Dr Christopher Fadden discovers a microbe that can digest plastic. He tells his friend, Gerard, of his dreams to use it to clean the world of plastic pollution.
Gerard's great-aunt Gwendoline also has dreams of a rockfall in a mine when she was a child and of a horse being injured.
But Chris Fadden's bug may not be a benign creation of nature. It may be a biological weapon created to cause the collapse of Western society.
Gerard finds himself ensnared in the double-think of military intelligence and it is only Aunt Gwendoline and her dreams that stand between him and the forces that threaten to crush him.