Beijing, sometime in the near future: a month has gone missing from official records. No one has any memory of it, and no one could care less --- except for a small circle of friends, who will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the sinister cheerfulness and amnesia that have possessed the Chinese nation. When they kidnap a high-ranking official and force him to reveal all, what they learn --- not only about their leaders, but also about their own people --- stuns them to the core. It is a message that will astound the world.