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It is late in the Ceausescu era in Romania, and Cristina is having a difficult time with her boyfriend. He wants her to have sex with him before he goes off to do his obligatory stint in the army. She wants him to marry her first. She also gets involved with a slightly rebellious actor, a would-be ladies' man. He has some vague plans to defect - could those be the reason he is receiving mysterious phone calls? Or are they the work of his anonymous admirer?

Brothers Martin and Simon, not yet teens, are incorrigible vandals; Martin runs away from reform school, Simon from foster homes, and they always find each other in a seacoast town of Lignan, where their destructive behavior is infamous. (It may date to their mother's leaving the family.) Martin is philosophical, romantic, and poetic: he dreams of being the son of a shark; he holds tight to a book about goldfish his mother gave him. In both halting and wild ways, he tries to court Marie, a neighbor girl. Simon, with a pocketknife and an intractable will, seems more dangerous to others. What, on earth, is there for these children-becoming-men?

Humanity lives in fear of an alien invasion: for the first time in history, a coded message from outer space has reached planet Earth. A few months later, the 12,000 residents of Sepulveda vanish. Authorities immediately quarantine the area, a free zone where drug trafficking and illicit sex were the most common businesses. When strange magnetic phenomena are observed, military authorities grudgingly concede the possibility of an alien offensive, and send professor Larsen -a renowned astrophysicist specialized in UFOs- to lead a quick investigation in the ghost town.

After his fiancee leaves him, Tom finds himself alone and helpless. He has to wash his clothes himself and so goes to the laundromat. There, he meets a quaint tribe and opens up to a new world and incredible horizons.