Liverpool. May 1970. The students' occupation of the University has now ended, and an expert librarian is summoned to restore the order amongst tomes and papers. What he discovers, though, will precipitate him in a gloomy and sombre journey up to the darkest bottom of the black human nature. The songs by The Beatles and the great expectations mirrored in the new experiments in design act as counterpoint against a social situation on the edge of abyss, amid widespread unemployment and the loss of identity of an entire generation. And, all over, looms the long shadow of a strange professor, elusive and sinister, until the final revelation.