Cynthia Anne Ashbaugh was born on July 28,1998 into a middle-class family in Wauseon, Ohio. By her sixth year she exhibited the talents of a prodigy on the piano. Her mother was a pianist, and the family had a Steinway Parlor Grand piano that had been handed down from her mother's side of the family over four generations. It was Cynthia's great-grandmother Anne, who was living with them, that encouraged the very young Cynthia's interest in Sergei Rachmaninoff, the man and his music. She told her the stories her mother had told her of the time she had spent with him, the love they shared and the music they created together.

It is in Cynthia's dreams that she comes to believe that she had been with Rachmaninoff himself, helping him compose the first movement of his Concerto Number 2 and aiding his recovery from the depression he was experiencing at that time. She had a mental breakdown while in her junior year at Interlochen College of Creative Arts and was found sleeping on a bench in the West Hollywood Greyhound Bus Station not knowing who she was, with no money or identification and saying she had come there to visit Rachmaninoff at his home in nearby Beverly Hills.

As she is recovering from this breakdown, as a caregiver to an elderly lady, Wilma Herman, she becomes surrounded by a group of talented people. Most importantly John who, with five scientist friends, had invented and built a travel back in time machine. This had made it possible for a trip back in time for her, and two others, to visit Rachmaninoff at his home just before his death in 1943. This trip brings up the question of her having been there before that requires answering.

Rachmaninoff recognizes her from an earlier time and gives her three boxes, two of which contain his never published compositions. In one of those boxes are two short compositions that had never been heard before, but that Cindy could flawlessly play from memory. These two scores were identified as 1899 Cynthia on the top of the first page.

They shouldn't have been there, and it is here that the story of Cynthia's Dreams begins.