Nicholas Duval, currently seeking a Post Doc placement that might lead into an academic career, has a temporary position as a Teaching Assistant in a university Mathematics Department. His chance encounter with a stressed American exchange student studying in a different Department, whom he seeks to help out of natural sympathy, leads to their discovery of uncanny similarities between their childhood experiences. As they try to make sense of this shared history amidst the pressures and challenges of university life, a sudden nuclear confrontation in the Middle East throws them together in ways that neither of them anticipated. Then Nicholas' uncle arrives with a communication device seemingly decades ahead of current technology which connects them - both physically and metaphorically - to the rest of his family: the part that Nicholas barely knows but which now desperately needs the dormant skills of which he is unaware. 'The gift does not come without need nor without peril - take heed: what you give, you may give away.'