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Paul Baumer and his friends Albert and Muller, egged on by romantic dreams of heroism, voluntarily enlist in the German army. Full of excitement and patriotic fervour, the boys enthusiastically march into a war they believe in. But once on the Western Front, they discover the soul-destroying horror of World War I.
After having a chance encounter with a mysterious character, Wendy, a young working class mother, discovers that she has super powers.
The story is set some time in the past, or maybe some time in the future. Given a time-frame, we would say somewhere between the American moonwalk, and Coca- Cola's serious ambition to turn the moon into an advertising logo. Our central character, the young lift operator, is formed by experience into cynicism, detachment, and apathy. The story builds to its crescendo: of public outrage and state crackdown; the banality of commercial interest and the monumental rape of nature. Set in a large newspaper office, the Lift is a place of relative safety. But floor by floor, with each passenger in his or her tableau, the atmosphere of mayhem seeps in. Finally our young character leaves the situation, far-gone in hopelessness and disinterest.
A woman in her mid-forties goes on a journey to the country. She visits her mother, whom she hasn't seen for quite a while. Of course, her father, who has been missing for many years, dominates the women's topic of conversation at first. What is said about the father raises questions as the pictures become more and more divergent. The following day she goes to see the manager of the train station café, the place from which her father departed on his forays. The manager is unable to say anything of importance. The woman strolls past the places she knew as a child and arrives at the meadow she was allowed to accompany her father to before he infiltrated the forbidden zone. She then follows the supposed paths her father took.
