Mark Carmody, narrator and son of famed novelist Laird Carmody, recounts his role caring for his father in old age. In 2021, freelance writer Ruth Crawford requests an interview about Laird and his lifelong friend David "Butch" LaVerdiere—a celebrated painter—both of whom mysteriously rose from obscurity in small-town Harlow, Maine, to fame in their mid-forties. Laird refuses, as does Mark, though Mark suspects his father is hiding something. Mark recalls his mother's distressed call in 1978, after Laird and Butch returned from a hunting trip in the 30-Mile Wood looking shaken; both insisted they had merely gotten lost.

Ruth persists, gathering local color but no real explanation for the men's creative breakthroughs. After meeting Mark off-the-record, she catches Laird at his picket fence and is granted three questions. Laird recounts fond memories of hunting at his grandfather's cabin with Butch, but refuses to explain their transformation, calling them simply "two talented bastids." Two years later, Laird breaks his hip, gives Mark a key to his desk drawer with instructions to read what's inside if he dies, and passes away after surgery.

Mark opens the drawer and finds UFO clippings and a notebook containing Laird's account of November 1978: while hunting, he and Butch saw mysterious lights in the clouds, then later found a not-quite-human woman dying on the bridge. They saved her with an EpiPen and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. A young blond visitor—an alien—appeared, explaining his species "gathers" objects from doomed worlds. As thanks for saving Ylla, he gave them a gray case shaped like spectacles, opened by breath, granting access to creative talent already latent within them. He warned Earth would be gone within a century.

Mark visits the abandoned cabin, which Laird and Butch had paid taxes on for decades to preserve. He finds the gray case still on the mantel. Confessing his own daydreams of literary greatness and piano virtuosity, he breathes on the wave. The case briefly shows a line, then closes. Nothing is there. Mark accepts that the gift wasn't meant for him, recalling the alien's words: nothing can give you what isn't already there.