High school physics teacher, Pappy Butler, feels he has a handle on a telepathy-type force that transcends distance and time, which he calls "Zero Time Theory," and has tried for years to get his paper on this theory published. Meanwhile, he's having marital problems as well as issues at his high school, where he has crossed the principal and superintendent and is falsely accused of negligence and unprofessional behavior for threatening the school librarian, creating the legal definition of a hostile work environment. But it isn't until Pappy is given a "molecule machine" by another scientist that his troubles really start. Both the government and a rival scientist also want this machine, and they don't care who they hurt to get it.