The United States is near total collapse. But 87 percent of the population doesn't care: they're addicted to flashback, a drug that allows its users to reexperience the best moments of their lives. After ex-detective Nick Bottom's wife died in a car accident, he went under the flash to be with her. He has lost his job, his teenage son, and his livelihood as a result.

Nick may be a lost soul, but he's still a good cop; so he is hired to investigate the murder of the son of a top governmental advisor. This flashback addict becomes the one man who may be able to change the course of an entire nation that is turning away from the future to live in the past.