Amy Benic takes a vacation at a spa outside New York City. Virgil Adamson is a masseur at the spa and gives Amy a massage. Amy inexplicably cries and Virgil comforts her. While complimenting Virgil on the massage, Amy realizes that Virgil is blind. Virgil asks her out, and the two eventually begin a relationship. Virgil lives alone, though his over-protective sister Jennie lives next door and takes care of him. Virgil reveals that he went blind when he was three and that the last thing he saw was something fluffy. While researching Virgil's condition, Amy learns of Doctor Charles Aaron, a specialist in eye treatment who suggests to Virgil that, with surgery, he could restore his sight. Virgil angrily refuses. Jennie reveals that their father left the family after putting Virgil through several kinds of treatments in order to restore his sight. Virgil eventually decides he will give the operation a try. It is a success, but after Virgil regains sight, he becomes confused and disoriented, unable to perceive light and distance. Dr. Aaron suggests that he should visit Phil Webster, a visual physiotherapist. Webster in turn suggests that Virgil needs to learn everything from scratch himself, through experience. Virgil and Amy begin living in New York City. The pair begin drifting apart, as Virgil finds it hard to decipher the look on Amy's face at times. Amy finds herself constantly having to explain basic things to Virgil. While at a party, Virgil walks into a glass pane due to his poor perception. Virgil's father sees him on television and arranges a reunion; Virgil goes to his father's workplace, but decides at the last minute that he cannot face him yet. On one of the regular visits with Webster, they engage in a deep conversation, where Webster notes that instead of just "seeing", Virgil should "look"; there are a lot of things that sight alone cannot solve. Virgil confesses that he and Amy are drifting apart, but insists that Amy is the most important thing in his life. Upon returning from a work trip to Atlanta, where she and her ex-husband shared a sensual moment, Amy decides to save the relationship. She finds Virgil in a park looking for "the horizon" in the city. Virgil's sight begins deteriorating. After consulting with Dr. Aaron, Virgil realizes that he is losing his sight yet again. He decides to look for his father. Virgil reveals to him that he is going blind again, and asks him why he left. His father tells him that he felt he was a failure when he did not find a way to help his son regain sight. Virgil states that he should not have left because his mother and sister suffered greatly after his father walked away. Virgil looks for Amy, who tells him about her plans to travel with him to places like Egypt and Europe. Withholding the fact that he is again going blind, Virgil tells her there is one thing he really wants to see, and brings her to a New York Rangers game. At the game, Virgil realizes that the "fluffy cloud" he last remembers seeing was cotton candy. He suffers a lengthened vision blackout and admits to Amy that he is going blind, which Amy refuses to accept. Back home, Virgil and Amy argue. He asks if she wants to spend her life with him if he is going to be blind forever. Amy hesitates, and Virgil decides to return home. Virgil eases back into his old way of life. While losing his sight, Virgil decides to look at as many things as possible, going through magazines and pictorial books in the library. He stays up to watch the sunset, seeing the horizon for the first and last time. After he has been blind again for some time, Virgil is at a park with a guide dog. Amy approaches and they reconnect. Amy apologizes to Virgil for trying to change him and for moving too fast. She asks if he wants to take a walk and "see what they see". They leave the park together.

Three young astronomers are baffled once the newest team member discovers radio signals of a seemingly impossible origin on 1420.163 MHz, in the water hole. After an unexplained power surge deletes crucial recordings, the team members unite and discover that the radio signals resolve to a response to the Arecibo message, a message beamed into space via radio waves in 1974, broadcast by a spacecraft in low Earth orbit using a cloaking system that renders the craft invisible on the visual spectrum but visible in infrared. After the team race to a local radio telescope array to get a new battery when a low battery threatens to halt their investigation, it turns out that the team were the first to receive and identify the message. At the finale, SETI coordinates a global message to be beamed to the craft: "Welcome to Earth", at which point the craft decloaks.

Alfred is a talented artist. He does not care to be rich or famous and gives full attention to his artworks and creation. His girlfriend Moniek is a successful writer for a popular soap opera. Alfred's lack of ambition and negligence towards money and material life irritates Moniek, who bases the plot for each soap opera episode on her own life. Alfred discovers Moniek has been conducting an affair with her boss after watching the soap opera, and moves in with his sister after the couple splits. To support himself, he begins offering his services as a friend to strangers at 50 guilders per hour.

In San Francisco, college dropout John Elias (John Light) is determined to set up his own internet business named Digital Dreams, based on his vision of building a better and faster communication for mankind. He hires a deal closer named Robert Jennings (Jeffrey Donovan) as his Executive VP and after successfully receiving the finance, John and Robert start to launch and run the company together. But once he makes his first million, John is soon distracted by greed, fame and fortune whilst his company starts to become at risk of a hostile takeover.

Michael Faraday is a history professor at George Washington University, teaching a class on American terrorism and living in Reston, Virginia, with his young son Grant. Since the death of his wife Leah, an FBI agent, Michael remains friends with her partner Whit Carver and is dating his former graduate student Brooke Wolfe. Finding a boy named Brady injured by fireworks, Michael rushes him to the hospital and meets his parents, Oliver and Cheryl Lang. They discover they are neighbours on Arlington Road and their sons become friends, joining a scouting troop together. Oliver appears to lie about an alumni letter delivered by mistake and about a blueprint Michael notices in the Langs' house. Michael becomes suspicious, intensified by Oliver's anti-government sentiments and his interest in Leah's death, but reluctantly lets Grant join Brady on a scouting trip. He presents his class with the case of Dean Scobee, who died bombing a federal building in St. Louis months earlier despite no record of terrorist activity. Bringing his students to the site of the Ruby Ridge -style standoff where Leah was killed, an emotional Michael excoriates the FBI for mistakenly identifying their target as a potential terrorist. Michael determines Oliver lied about where he attended college and was actually born William Fenimore in the same Kansas town as the deceased Oliver Lang, and 16-year-old William was arrested for trying to blow up a government office. Michael convinces the Langs' children to let him into Oliver's home office while their parents are out, and he finds the suspicious blueprint hidden behind a Gateway Arch schematic, but is nearly caught when Cheryl returns. Brooke dismisses Michael's concerns, suggesting his terrorism studies and Leah's death have made him paranoid and obsessive. Oliver confronts Michael for investigating him, explaining that the attempted bombing was a regrettable act as an angry teenager: the government cut off his family's farm from their water supply, and his father committed suicide, staged as an accident so the family could collect his life insurance payout, but they lost their land. To escape his past, William assumed the name of Oliver Lang, a childhood friend who died after college. Brooke later spots Oliver switching vehicles and follows him to a warehouse where he loads his car with mysterious cases. She leaves Michael a voicemail but is confronted by Cheryl. That night, Michael learns Brooke has been killed in an apparent car accident, and is comforted by the Langs, apologising to them for his mistrust. However, a call from Whit reveals that Michael's answering machine has been erased, and he warns Whit to investigate his suspicions about Oliver. Visiting Dean Scobee's father, who is certain his son could not have acted alone, Michael notices a photo of Dean with Grant's scout leader. He realizes Grant has been taken by Oliver, who declares that he and his sinister group killed Brooke; he murdered the real Oliver to assume his identity, and threatens Grant's life, warning Michael not to interfere with their plans. Whit finds nothing incriminating about Oliver but confirms that Michael received a call from the payphone Brooke used. Driving there, Michael spots the Langs' associates and tries to follow them but sees Grant inside their van. Michael is intercepted and beaten by Oliver, who asserts his group's mission, but Michael overpowers him and realises he intends to blow up the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Warning Whit, Michael pursues the van into the building's garage, only to discover he is chasing a decoy. He finds the bomb planted in the trunk of his car as it detonates (having unknowingly driven the bomb to its destination in his own vehicle), and Oliver watches from a distance as the blast destroys FBI headquarters. With Michael and Whit among the dead, the Langs and their conspirators successfully frame Michael as a lone wolf terrorist — just as they did with Dean Scobee — seeking revenge on the FBI for Leah's death, supported by accounts of his increasingly erratic behaviour. It is implied that the Langs and their organization had chosen Faraday long before to be their patsy because of his history, and had been planning to involve and frame him all along. The orphaned Grant moves in with relatives, unaware of his father's innocence, while Oliver and Cheryl prepare to move their family to another safe suburb for their next attack.