Summaries

Synopsis

Greg Wittle (Owen Wilson) spends his work hours daydreaming and drawing. When he is fired, he imagines accidentally killing his boss Bjorn (Steve Zissis), and concealing the body behind his office curtains before leaving the office for the bar across the street. Doris (Madeline Zima) is Bjorn's secy. Greg alternates between reality and drug-induced fantasy.

In the bar, he meets Isabel (Salma Hayek), a homeless woman who appears to know what he has done. She speaks about having created this world with unintended consequences. Isabel drags Greg away, telling him to lay low to avoid police, and to avoid all contact with his family. She sells his phone and possessions. Isabel takes Greg to a tented area in a homeless shelter kind of place. Isabel shows Greg many mind tricks like lighting candles with a lighter from a distance and then blowing them off from afar.He shares his drawings with her, and she offers him crushed yellow crystal. Isabel helps Greg imagine that with the crystal, he is able to manipulate the world Telekinetically.

Greg descends deeper into hallucination. He is homeless and has lost a sense of time. After an altercation at a roller rink in which he and Isabel imagine Telekinetically tripping a bully, he watches police arrest the bully, only to discover himself in the back of the squad car. Greg is released and his daughter Emily (Nesta Cooper) searches for him.

While Isabel gets more crystals from her contact Kendo (Ronny Chieng), Emily spots Greg on the street and attempts to rescue him. She gives him her phone number and asks Greg to call her. One day Greg wakes up in Isabel's tent and finds her absent but sees his drawings posted. He finds Emily's phone number and calls her but gets the answering machine. When he returns, Isabel is there, furious that he called Emily, asserting she is not real. Greg is adamant that he does not believe Isabel and he needs proof of the "reality". Isabel decides she needs to prove what reality is to him. She plans to eject them both out of this "false" world using blue crystals. They need 10 blue crystals each to exit, but Isabel only has 16, so she uses 8 each.

In what proves to be a hallucination, Greg 'wakes up' attached to a giant computer along with several others including Isabel. He is told that he has been experiencing a simulation within a Brain Box created by Isabel to study alternate realities and their effects on the human brain.Isabel reveals they are a couple in this world and takes Greg home, showing him his drawings were recreations of this setting. Greg does not remember this world, and Isabel says that after a long dark period of poverty, most problems on Earth were eliminated (Synthetic biology, asteroid mining & automation) allowing humanity to flourish. Greg still has vivid memories of the 'simulation,' but Isabel warns him the simulation pulls tricks on the user.

Isabel is concerned that the scientific community has not accepted the Brain Box (Simulated worlds that users can jack into) and wants Greg to come back into the Simulation to complete the cycle. Greg is very apprehensive to go back in. Greg encourages Isabel to publish her data. Isabel shows Pre and Post videos of Greg and demonstrates how the Brain Box has conditioned his behavior to be more amicable, friendly and toned down.A gala is thrown for the Brain Box. During the celebration, Greg wanders off and encounters a ghostly Emily, who implores him to come back to her. Emily argues that Greg has to choose between one of the 2 worlds. Isabel begins to see elements from the simulation leak into her view and claims they need to go back into the simulation and take more blue crystals in order to fully exit it. Back within the 'simulation,' Isabel gets more crystals from Kendo, but ends up shooting him (She tells Greg that Kendo is real and is alive outside the simulation). Greg finds that Bjorn is alive. The police are on their tail after they steal a car.

At her tent, Isabel finds that there are only enough crystals for one of them to 'leave'. The police have surrounded them and one who stays back will be stuck as Kendo is dead and will probably spend the rest of their simulated "life" in prison. Greg suggests Isabel kill him since he believes 'real' people cannot die in the simulation, but hearing Emily, who has tracked him down, Greg insists Isabel go back alone, which she accepts. Isabel distracts the police long enough for Greg to escape to a rehab clinic, admitting that he believes that his daughter Emily is real. Sometime later, Greg reconnects with Emily.