A daft but ultimately quite profound tale about the chaotic happenstance which plunges a mild and underweight philosopher into the daring project of a modern day alchemist. Theo Fintwistle, an avid logician and author of computer manuals, is caught in a civil war between two philosophical schools whilst studying at Cambridge. His alumni at the New York Sandwich Institute fly him to exile in New York but he is mistakenly arrested on arrival and thrown into a convict bus which is promptly hijacked leaving him and Spinny 'neuro-boy' Jones to chew the proverbial cud. Very shortly Theo becomes reluctantly embroiled in an attempt to build a psycho-active drug to lift human thought to the more rarefied dimensions in which our holier ancestors once dwelt. Across three continents, at high speed and often in perilous accommodation, Theo soon embarks on a desperate attempt to gather the vital ingredients to save human thought from reaching a state of total and immovable boredom. An unholy blend of high brow philosophy and square wheeled vans.