chunk: Jacob awakens in 1975, on a New York City Subway, with the novel The Stranger. Despite having a PhD, Jacob works as a postal clerk and lives in a rundown apartment in Brooklyn with his seductive girlfriend, Jezzie. Jacob misses his wife and their three sons, especially the youngest, Gabe, who died before the war. He is increasingly beset by disturbing experiences, including inexplicably locked subway exits, faceless vibrating people, a car trying to run him down, a nurse with grotesque teeth on the top of her head, and a bat-like monster penetrating Jezzie at a party, where Jacob collapses with a dangerous fever.