A foundling child, raised as a ward of the state, Doctor Walter Clements achieves early prominence in the field of particle physics. Disillusioned with the state of the world and his personal contributions towards making things worse, he walks away from an existence he did not like and never goes back. Safe from government oversight for more than twenty-eight years in a parallel universe of 98 AD, Walter Clements, in his alter ego of Ben Silva, is recognized on a surveillance tape, and the government, sets an elaborate trap crossing twenty centuries.