Defendant 47 is on Trial. His judge and lawyers are asking him questions he apparently cannot answer. He only remembers a few details, where he’s been lately, and glimpses of the past. He may have lost his memory. He also suffers from narcolepsy, so he tends to fall asleep right in the middle of the hearing. Despite all this Defendant 47 slowly starts remembering. His name is Charles Dee. He’s a scientist, a mathematician, teaching his students numbers and rules. One day, for the first time, he enters a photographer’s studio. He comes in contact with photography, the new science and art, and gets immediately involved with this new tool of human understanding. He befriends Mr.Niepce, the owner of the studio. Their friendship grows to the point where Mr. Niepce, having come down with an ailment, asks Defendant 47 to run the studio. Now Defendant 47 begins to get the hang for photography in earnest and meets a new friend, Mr. Lewis Cellar, also interested in the art. Together they develop new methods to take stills, to freeze a frame forever. Their preferred subject is childhood, the human being caught at a time of perfection. So they start to take photographs of children. That’s how mr.Dee meets Ellen Rhodes, the mother of one of his preferred subjects. And this meeting brings everything to a head, and a dark end.