Eleanor “Ellie” Carter, a talented yet emotionally damaged astrophysicist, has spent the past year mourning the loss of her husband, Daniel, who was proclaimed dead after a catastrophic accident during a clandestine space mission. Haunted by regret and unresolved questions, she isolates herself in their secluded lakeside cabin, surrounded by memories of their love and the life they established together.
Ellie gets a strange postcard in the mail one evening. The message is straightforward: I wish you were here, and the handwriting is definitely Daniel’s. The postmark, however, is dated three days in the future.
Ellie initially writes it off as a complex hoax, but as more postcards show up, each with mysterious coordinates and messages, she starts to worry that Daniel might still be alive.
Even more impossible would be speaking to her from a place outside of time.
In her quest to learn the truth, Ellie follows the hints to several places that hold significance for their relationship, including a remote observatory, a long-gone hotel, and even an abandoned airport where Daniel used to whisper cosmic secrets. Daniel’s ultimate purpose was not only scientific but also intensely personal, since each stop reveals tidbits of undiscovered information.
Dr. Victor Lang, a renegade scientist, is encountered by Ellie as she solves the puzzle and cryptically cautions her that some doors, once opened, can never be closed. Daniel had been working on an experiment combining quantum entanglement and temporal loops, which Lang, who was previously his mentor, suggests could enable consciousness to transcend the confines of the physical universe.
Daniel might be living in a paradox, torn between dimensions, if he had been successful.
Ellie finds an abandoned laboratory hidden beneath an Arctic research station after following the last hint. She finds an experimental gizmo there, a contraption that can project consciousness over time. However, the gadget was never intended to be turned on without a way to return it. She has to put everything on the line to rescue Daniel if he is stuck.
Ellie makes a crucial choice as time runs out and government officials approach to confiscate the technology. With the help of the gadget and the final postcard’s words, “Find me where time stands still,” she sets out into the unknown.
In a terrifying limbo between the past and the future, where Daniel’s existence echoes like an echo, she witnesses something that defies sense. He discloses that the incident was actually the result of a mission gone wrong—a space-time rupture that trapped him in a collapsing loop—rather than an accident. Since then, he has been attempting to get in touch with her.
Ellie is forced to choose between staying with Daniel in a timeless emptiness or cutting the connection and going back to the world by herself with the knowledge of what is beyond as the fabric of reality starts to fall apart around them.
Finally, she wakes up in her cabin, breathing heavily. There are no more postcards. Other than a single, recently written note at her bedside, there is no trace of her travels left.
