Gilbert awakens in 1983 floating in the north Atlantic when all of a sudden a U.S. submarine emerges from the depths and plucks him from certain death. (The book's cover shows Gilbert on the deck of a modern submarine.) Together with some hundred other "Temporally Displaced Persons," or DTIs, the government term for those it’s kidnapped from other times, Gilbert is illegally incarcerated in a secret installation in Horsefield, New Jersey where authorities conduct experiments designed to extract historical and linguistic secrets from the past. Gilbert is forced to live a pathetic existence of living in a prison and must wear a protective suit just to prevent himself from being infected with deadly modern day viruses and bacteria.
