When Kwame Norman awakens to a nightmare of frosty bats, Nouse-Mouse (the virtual computer mouse from the magical land of KaleidoKen) identifies them as Time Vampires. These vampires, he informs Kwame, don't suck blood--they suck time. Kwame's father, a scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has become one of their prime victims. And now they've turned their attention to feasting on the minutes and hours of Kwame's life. To save his father and himself, Kwame must hazard a kaleidoscope adventure. He barely has time to panic before Nouse-Mouse sends him and three of his friends through the kaleidoscope to the Caverns of the Timely River to serve as "Gallant Champions, Defenders of the Fourth Dimension." Their mission: to find the Time, defeat the Time Thieves, and recover the gift of the present. It won't be easy. The Time Vampires aren't the only Time Thieves on the scene: the Champions are ambushed by Not-Now Goblins, driven into Time Forgotten, and tricked by Dally the Dawdle-Doodle into the middle of next week. Worse, Muddle-gnomes have been destroying the order of Time by unbraiding carefully woven strands of Past, Present, and Future. Kwame, drawing on his Ashanti heritage, including kente-cloth weaving traditions he learned from his grandfather, thinks he's beginning to get things under control--until he discovers he's living on borrowed Time. Will it run out before the Champions can find the Time and re-braid its tangled strands?