While walking down the street in Chicago, Joseph Schwartz, a retired tailor, is the unwitting victim of a nearby nuclear laboratory accident, by means of which he is instantaneously transported tens of thousands of years into the future (50,000 years, by one character's estimate). He finds himself in a place he does not recognise, and due to apparent changes in spoken language, he is unable to communicate with anyone. He wanders into a farm, and is taken in by the couple who live there. They mistaken him for a mentally deficient person, and secretly offer him as a subject for an experimental procedure to increase his mental abilities. The procedure, which has killed several subjects, works in his case, and he finds that he can quickly learn to speak the current language. He also slowly rea