Derek "Van" Vandeveer is a young, well respected, computer scientist who we find enjoying breakfast in his new home with his wife and young son. He is rich with stock options and heady with his own success when his whole world is suddenly and forever changed as the planes begin crashing into the World Trade Center. Within months his fortune is gone to an Enron-like scandal, and his wife and son have moved west to work on a new telescope being developed by a billionaire entrepreneur.