Rez lost his wife sometime in the past, now he is a man abandoned by society, trying to survive, and provide for his daughter. He possesses a gift: the perfect photographic memory, but having perfect recall isn't all it's cracked up to be. He finds himself involved with dangerous people from his past who persuade him into testing their stolen time machine "Titus" that has the ability to send someone hours into the future. When he leaps forward in time and witnesses a nuclear explosion, he returns to his own time and has only eight hours to discover the cause and save the city from destruction.

Desmond Doyle is devastated when his wife abandons their family on the day after Christmas. His unemployment, and the fact that there is no woman in the house to care for the children—Evelyn, Dermot and Maurice—make it clear to the authorities this is an untenable situation. The Catholic Church and the Irish courts decide to put the Doyle children into Church-run orphanages.