In the near future, climate change, deforestation, and a nuclear war have caused so much damage to
Earth that little by little most cities all over the world are crumbling down. There is a power and
food shortage, plus a dangerous lack of oxygen. By the year 2067, one of the few remaining cities
is in Australia, which has been able to hold out thanks to synthetic oxygen. However this oxygen
is polluted and causes people to get ill with something known as “The Sickness”. Ethan Whyte
and his best friend Jude do their job as utility workers to keep the neutral reactor stabilized and
bring back power to the city. After the work day is over, their boss scans them to be sure everyone
is still healthy. One of the workers says he can't come the next day, so Ethan takes his shift
to earn extra oxygen credits. However the boss still fires the poor man. On his way home, Ethan
sees a protestor talking about oxygen not being a privilege and how they should sacrifice for the
next generations. While the passersby ignore him, Ethan is confronted by the fired worker,
who is desperate for work because his children have the Sickness. An argument ensues, only to be
interrupted when the protestor suddenly catches on fire. Later at home, Ethan sees on the news that
the protestor did that to commemorate the death of the last living plant. The report also mentions
the increasing number of deaths due to the Sickness and how ChroniCorp, the oxygen producer
company, promises to find a solution. However people keep revolting because they’re scared
humanity will go extinct soon. Then the reporter starts talking about the ChroniCops' dead lead
scientist, who was Ethan’s father Richard, and this causes him to turn off the TV. At that moment
Ethan’s wife Xanthe arrives and he gifts her a new oxygen mask. As they fool around, Xanthe suddenly
vomits blood because she’s got the Sickness, but Xanthe assures Ethan that she’s fine. Sometime
later, Ethan is summoned to the offices of ChroniCops and Jude comes along. They meet Regina,
the company’s Chief Technology Officer, who says Ethan can help them save humanity before taking
them to the lab. It turns out they're working on a time machine called the Chronicle which was
invented by Richard twenty years ago. They’ve been testing it by sending a clock for a few minutes,
but they’ve also sent radio waves and received a reply from 400 years in the future with the words
"send Ethan Whyte". Regina theorizes that people from the future found the cure for the Sickness
and will only give it to Ethan. The team doesn't know how to get Ethan back though, so he'll have
to find the people who sent the message to be able to return. After the meeting, Ethan goes to a bar
with Jude to think about Regina’s request. Ethan doesn't want to leave Xanthe, but Jude points
out that staying means Xanthe dying, while going may mean saving her for years to come. When Jude
tries to bring up Richard, Ethan reminds him that his father disappeared after leaving his
eight-year-son with nothing but a self-deletion note and a weird device on his wrist. Ethan thinks
his mother wouldn’t have died if Richard had been around, so he refuses to do the same to Xanthe.
However Jude thinks that not to be like Richard, Ethan must save Xanthe. After Jude leaves,
Ethan thinks about his eighth birthday. He waited all day for his dad but Richard arrived late,
and his present turned out to be a weird box. He put little Ethan’s hand inside this box,
telling him he’d have to make an important choice someday, and suddenly an electronic
bracelet closed around his wrist, causing it to bleed. As the boy cried in pain, Richard told him
that the bracelet wouldn't come off and left the house, ignoring his wife’s protests. Then
Ethan also can’t help remembering his mother’s death and decides to go home to tell Xanthe about
ChroniCorp's plan. He doesn’t want to leave her, but Xanthe asks him not to use her as an excuse to
avoid saving humanity and to have faith. She also mentions all the kids in her class that have died,
saying she’s afraid. Later in the evening, Ethan goes to the roof to watch the city and desperately
tries to remove the bracelet as he again remembers the day his mother died on the streets. That day
Jude found him and shared his oxygen mask with him. In the present, Ethan screams as he makes
his decision. The next morning, Ethan leaves a metal flower for Xanthe with a promise that he'll
return, unaware that she’s actually awake and crying. When he makes it to the ChroniCops office,
he makes a deal with Regina: he won't go unless Xanthe gets the first dose of the cure. Regine
accepts and they immediately go to the lab, where the scientists explain to Ethan how to use the
special suit and a small pocket computer called Archie. Jude shows up as well to show his support,
promising to watch over Xanther. Once he’s ready, Ethan steps into the machine and electricity wraps
around his body until the machine shoots a blast of energy, sending Ethan into the future. A hole
opens in the sky and Ethan falls at great speed until he lands in the middle of a rainforest,
instantly fainting. When Ethan wakes up, he notices his suit is burning and immediately
takes it off, crawling away from it right before it explodes. Then Ethan’s body has to take a
moment to get used to the sunlight and the clean oxygen, which have allowed vegetation to regrow
in the whole area. After admiring nature for a while, Ethan uses Archie to check his location,
but Archie can't connect to any satellite. He ends up releasing a magnet into the ground,
which allows Archie to sense nearby structures and she guides Archie to the nearest facility. At
the entrance, Ethan’s surprised to find a skeleton with a hole in the skull, but the real shock comes
when he sees the skeleton is wearing the suit with his name. He also finds a rusted Archie under the
leaves and Richard’s bracelet on the skeleton’s wrist, although this one has a green light. This
means he’s dying on this mission, which makes him panic. Once he calms down, he tries to open the
facility's doors to no avail, so instead he asks the rusted Archie to play the last recording. The
machine plays a distorted voice saying it’s better this way because then nobody is suffering anymore,
then two voices arguing followed by a gunshot. At that moment the battery runs out and the
rusted Archie shuts down. Then he notices a wire wrapped around the rusted Archie,
so Ethan grabs some wire from his suit and wraps it around his own Archie, which allows her to
finally detect a beacon signal. Ethan follows the signal through the forest and finds two oxygen
dispensers, but not a single person. Later in the evening, Ethan starts a fire with Archie’s help,
although it takes him a while. He also finds some berries that Archie can’t identify, so Ethan eats
one and drops them because they taste awful. Next, Ethan asks Archie to use the constellations to
confirm it’s the year 2474, which makes him remember how he and Richard used to look at
the stars together. However the memory suddenly ends when Richard starts feeling sick, puking and
hallucinating while a thunderstorm covers the area. Ethan watches a ball of light crash near
his camp and as his hallucinations get worse, he notices a man running toward him to stab him in
the chest. Ethan passes out, and moments later, he wakes up to discover the mysterious guy is Jude,
who injected him with medicine to cure the poison Ethan got from the berry. The next morning,
Jude explains that ChroniCorp is tracking Ethan's vitals and noticed he was dying, so they used
their remaining power on the Chronicle to send Jude for help. Ethan shows Jude the skeleton,
but Jude doesn’t think that could possibly be Ethan. Afterward they use Archie to continue
to track the signal and eventually they find another facility, which scans Ethan's eye and
instantly opens the door. It’s very dark inside except for a glowing screen with Ethan’s name on
it. When he presses Enter, the bracelet on his wrist activates and extracts blood to analyze
his D.N.A. Thinking they’re being attacked, Jude reveals he’s brought a gun with him. Suddenly the
light on the bracelet turns green, and now that Ethan’s identity has been confirmed, the computer
turns on the lights. The duo is shocked to discover that they're in ChroniCorp's lab,
and the computer announces that the portal will open in four hours. Jude is relieved but Ethan is
worried because his bracelet is green just like the skeleton’s. Next, Ethen checks the computer
logs and finds a holographic recording by Richard from the time he worked for ChroniCorp. Richard
explained that they buried a monitoring station, which would send data from the future when the
air became breathable. In the next entry, the team prepared to receive a reply from 2474,
but they only got the words “send Ethan Whyte”. Regina asked if they could send matter now,
but the report indicated that there was a problem with the power in 2474. Suddenly the lab system
goes off and the computer alerts Ethan of an issue with the nuclear core power. Ethan makes Archie
run a diagnosis and they discover the power feed is corrupted, meaning they won’t be able to return
to 2067. The computer also warns them that if they don’t fix the issue before the countdown ends,
there will be a nuclear explosion. Jude rushes to find tools, but Ethan is stuck on the implications
of what they’ve learned: ChroniCorp knew about the power failure because they received the message
long before calling him, and that message was set from here, meaning they’ve fixed this place
and found a cure. He wonders why ChroniCop didn’t tell them about the power failure and sent Jude
instead of a medic, but Jude just says he was the only one who volunteered. Then Jude insists they
should work on the repairs, but Ethan wants to analyze their situation first, which almost causes
Jude to get aggressive. As Ethan steps back, Jude calms down and asks him to notice how serious the
situation is, so Ethan agrees to go to the access tunnel for repairs as long as they search for the
sender of the message afterward. The duo crosses the forest and heads to the city, only to find
it in ruins and covered in vegetation. As they explore the area, they find a lot of skeletons,
and Ethan realizes nobody survived the year he came from. The Earth just waited for humans to
die and then replenished itself. Getting worried, they go to Xanthe's school and find the skeletons
of the students, meaning they died right there in the classroom. If nobody was around to move the
bodies, Ethan can’t help assuming they’ll fail the mission. Then he finds one more skeleton:
it’s Xanthe’s, and the metal flower is in her hand. As grief takes over his mind,
Ethan remembers the night Richard called them to meet somewhere, but they were followed by
a stranger who killed his mother and stole Ethan’s oxygen mask. Richard never showed up,
but Jude found Ethan and saved him. The memory causes Ethan to have a panic attack, but Jude
helps him calm down. Ethan cries and regrets leaving Xanthe alone, still thinking they won’t be
able to change anything. However Jude says they're better off because no one is suffering anymore,
which shocks Ethan because those are the words he heard from the rusted Archie. To confirm it,
Ethan plays the recording again, and he realizes the argument ends with Jude shooting him. At that
moment Jude takes out his gun and Ethan wants to know why he has it since there’s nothing
to fight here. An argument ensues until Archie reminds them that there are only two hours left
for the nuclear explosion. Jude drags Ethan to the tunnels and they notice the nuclear core is fried,
so they’ll have to reroute the power. Their attempts to do so immediately fail and the
computer tries to shut down the door for safety. Jude manages to block it with a metal bar, but
when Ethan hears the computer say that the chamber needs depressurization he removes the bar, leaving
Jude outside to save him. Then Ethan activates the oxygen purge, which restores the power but
causes him to faint. A desperate Jude breaks the glass, letting oxygen back inside to keep Ethan
alive. Afterward the duo returns to the lab and learns that they only have thirty-seven minutes
before the portal launch. Suddenly Ethan opens a door and discovers it leads to his skeleton, which
makes him accept that he can’t change fate. While Ethan switches the batteries of the two Archies,
he accuses Jude of planning to shoot him. Then he makes the rusted Archie play the last thing
the other Ethan saw, and the recording shows Jude threatening Ethan with a gun and asking
him to fight back. Jude swears he doesn’t plan to shoot Ethan and an argument ensues with Jude
suggesting they stay there, but Ethan refuses to leave everyone to die. Next, Ethan forces another
door open to find the utility room, but there are no masks. Jude insists they can’t save everyone,
but Ethan pushes him away and goes to the computer to play a log recorded on his eighth birthday.
Richard says he made a mistake, but the message is interrupted when Jude shuts off the power.
Furious, Ethan locks Jude up in the utility room and turns on the power again to finish watching
the message. Richard said he did everything for his son and wanted to tell him so, so he called
home and asked little Ethan to take a walk with his mother to meet with him. However before he
could leave, Regina and Jude entered the lab to corner him. It turned out Regina wanted to use the
Chronicle to escape to the future with a selected group of elite people and abandon the search for
a cure, claiming that humans were the real virus. Richard refused to cooperate and confessed that he
programmed the system so only Ethan could activate it in the future, causing a furious Regina to take
out a gun and ask one of the scientists if it was possible to send at least one person to fix the
power issue. When the scientist confirmed it could be done, Regina shot Richard. At that moment Jude
breaks free and tries stopping the recording to no avail, so the rest of the truth comes out: Regina
sent a team to kill Ethan’s mother and ordered Jude to become Ethan’s guardian. A devastated
Ethan jumps on Jude, calling him out for using him all these years and another argument ensues
over how to proceed. Ethan starts pulling cables to try to stop the Chronicle, so Jude attacks him,
pushing him against the wall as he begs him to fight. Since Ethan refuses, Jude brings out his
gun and aims at Ethan’s head, but Ethan still doesn’t fight back, saying he believes in his
brother. Seeing Ethan in such pain remembers Jude of the night they met and guilt takes over him,
so he apologizes to Ethan and then self-deletes. In the present Regina is getting the elite group
ready for their escape, and she orders a guard to kill Ethan as soon as they arrive in the future.
Back to Ethan, he has a breakdown and reaches for Jude’s hand, only snapping out of it when the
computer reacts to the ping sent by Regina’s team. This finally makes him realize that the person in
the lab who has been doing all the things is himself, so he writes the “send Ethan Whyte”
message with a plan in mind. In the present, Regina waits for the countdown to reach zero,
but instead of a portal opening, the Chronicle shuts down. Inside the machine they find a gift
from Ethan consisting of a bunch of plants, a can, and a video of Richard’s murder. In the future,
Ethan destroys the Chronicle so nobody will ever use it again. Soon newscasts in the present
are covering Regina’s arrest and how scientists are working with the plants to start ecological
regeneration. A ChronicCop employee brings the can to Xanthe because it has her name on it,
and when she opens it, she cries when she sees a real flower. In the future, Ethan buries Jude's
body by the river and leaves the metal flower on the grave. Suddenly he sees a butterfly nearby,
and as he remembers his father teaching him that everything in the universe is connected
through time, Ethan rushes back to the facility to discover his skeleton is gone. Excited about
the possible changes, Ethan runs through the forest to reach the city again, and
this time he discovers humanity has survived and developed buildings that safely blend with nature.