Set in the year 2084, the story concerns Doug Quaid, an average man with a wife of eight years and a dull job, who has a recurring dream about life on Mars. When he buys a "memory" of a trip to Mars from a company that sells memory implants so people can remember experiences they never had, something goes awry and suddenly Quaid snaps back to his true existence slowly realizing that the life he knows to be real is, in fact, fake.