On the way to work, five defence workers contemplate their pasts and their own reasons for working.

Six disparate people, four men and two women, they who don't really know each other, nonetheless carpool together to work at an airplane manufacturer, that work part of the American war effort. Their drives are usually in silence, until today when the driver, middle aged Jim Benson, confesses to the others that he tells his wife Martha what are made-up stories about who be believes the five of them are, it the opening to a dinner invitation from the Bensons to his carpoolers. Each has generally been quiet about whence he/she came to his/her current place of working at the factory. In Benson telling them what he has told Martha about them, each, in flashbacks, reminisces to him/herself about that past, each taking a very different path to this now current life common between the six of them. These ruminations dictate whether each will accept the dinner invitation, that gathering where they would necessarily open up about themselves.—Huggo