While walking down a city street with Jen, his girlfriend, a young man named Steve Marsh spots a flyer taped to a streetlight. The flyer features a picture that looks a lot like Steve, and has a row of tear-off phone numbers along the bottom, but otherwise says nothing. Naturally puzzled and curious, Steve takes a number. Later, at Jen’s apartment, Steve calls the number and gets a recorded message that mentions a local address and a time. He tells Jen he’s going out to pick up a pizza, and plans to visit the mysterious address on the way. Steve finds the address—a nondescript building—and cautiously enters. Immediately inside he finds an empty room. A large arrow taped to the wall points to a door. Accordingly, Steve goes through the door, only to find an empty hallway. More arrows guide him down more empty corridors, until he eventually arrives at a door with a sign reading ‘This Is It.’ Steve enters and finds himself in what appears to be a drab, vaguely creepy waiting room. Three other men are seated there, all wearing the same peculiar thing. Soon a woman enters the room and calls Steve’s name. The three men are angry at being skipped over, but the woman shouts them down and leads Steve to another room. She seats him at a desk with a phone and hands him a script. She tells him he’ll receive a phone call in exactly two minutes, and when he answers, he must read from the script. The phone does indeed ring two minutes later, and Steve finds himself having an inexplicable conversation that changes his life.