When Swallow, who suffers from debilitating migraines, finishes a stint in drug rehab, her daughter and the rest of her family want nothing more to do with her. She stays with a friend who talks her into joining a drug trial for a new headache medicine. A known side effect of the trial drug is vivid dreams, but Swallow thinks there's more to those dreams, which she calls journeys. She works on reestablishing a relationship with her daughter while journeying to other worlds through a now open doorway in her mind. On journeys, she meets Kai, who guides her through the quirks of many worlds. It's hard enough getting by in the world, especially when your family discarded you, but when you're involved in an almost unlimited number of worlds, isn't it impossible? As Swallow tells her daughter, "Everybody lives in many different worlds, be they private that not even your closest friends and family know about, your home world, your professional world, or others like educational, religious, military, sports, social, or what have you; learn to recognize them. Make sure you control your worlds rather than letting them control you. Sometimes it's easy to drift from one world to another, and sometimes barriers block you or suck you back to where you don't want to be. Look at me with my addiction; it still tries to suck me back into that world. You pick your worlds. Don't just go where the flow pushes you."