Like all other employees of Sunflower Pharmaceutical, Cayce Dorman sleepwalks through his job - literally. He uses Absol, a drug which allows him to do his job without retaining conscious awareness of doing so. It is as if he merely takes a pill and gets a paycheck. His days are his own to spend in leisure. Life should be perfect, yet he is subject to inexplicable bouts of anxiety. His friend Mason argues Absol has helped them land the perfect jobs. He insists the lack of memory means no work day stress, but Cayce remains unconvinced. He is plagued by brief mental flashes of brains and blood. Later, Cayce makes an error with his pills, taking the pill to wake him from his trance, rather than the one to put him into it. Though he tries to correct the error by taking the proper pill, it is too late. He is stuck on autopilot, making the habitual movements toward work while remaining conscious. When he arrives at Sunflower Pharmaceutical he is horrified to find out that his job consists of removing the pineal gland from dead people for use in the manufacture of Absol.