The story, set on a small Mediterranean island, concerns "a Middle European philosopher, alert to the implications of a postmodern world, who deserts negative dialectics for money-making.
Act 1 Vinerblut, a temporarily unemployed Middle-European philosopher specialising in "cultural criticism," arrives on an unnamed Mediterranean island, having heard about a miraculous fishing machine.
Vinerblut pretends to be an itinerant clairvoyant luminary and predicts a terrible fate for the island and its inhabitants, promising at the same time to deliver an antidote.
Astradiva, Rimestino and Marchingello decide to seize the machine at all costs but Vinerblut manages to steal it first, after which he prepares to leave the island with Candeggina.
On the beach at dawn, the trunk in which the stolen machine is hidden bursts open and everybody starts fighting over it until the apparatus falls to pieces.