After making love for the first time, high school senior Karen Ann McNeil confides to her boyfriend, Richard, of the dark visions she's been suffering recently. It's only a few hours later on that snowy Saturday night in 1979 that she descends into a coma. Nine months later, she gives birth to a daughter, Megan, her child by Richard. Karen remains comatose for the next eighteen years. Richard and her circle of friends reside in an emotional purgatory throughout the next two decades, passing through careers as models, film special-effects technicians, doctors, and demolition experts before finally being reunited while working on a conspiracy-driven supernatural television series. Upon Karen's reawakening, life grows as surreal as the television show. Strange, apocalyptic events begin to occur. Later, amid the world's rubble, Karen, Richard, and their friends attempt to restore their own humanity.