The narrative weaves together six interconnected stories that span across different eras and locations, ranging from the 19th-century South Pacific to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. Each story explores how the actions and consequences of individual lives impact one another throughout the past, the present, and the future. The first tale is set in the 1850s and follows Adam Ewing, an American lawyer traveling on a sailing ship across the Pacific, who encounters a stowaway slave and faces his own morality. In the 1930s, a young, talented composer named Robert Frobisher works as an amanuensis for a famous composer while creating his own masterpiece.

As the timeline progresses, the film presents a journalist in the 1970s unraveling a dangerous conspiracy at a nuclear power plant, a contemporary publisher who becomes trapped in a dire situation after a run-in with gangsters, a genetically-engineered fast food worker in a dystopian 2144 Korea who becomes part of a rebellion, and finally, a tribesman living in a post-apocalyptic Hawaii who is visited by a technologically advanced emissary. Each character is bound to the others by fate and the recurring echoes of one soul's journey through time. With each segment, themes of love, courage, and the will to stand against the status quo are paralleled, suggesting that decisions have rippling effects that transcend time and space.