Mars is a struggling colony, where conflicts from the overpopulated Earth (largely based in Cold War-era relationships) are loosely projected onto the planet.
Bohlen has a chance encounter with Arnie Kott, the hard-nosed leader of the Water Workers' Union, when both Bohlen's and Kott's 'copters are called to assist a group of critically dehydrated Bleekmen, the original inhabitants of Mars who are thought to be genetically similar to the Khoekhoe of Earth.
After visiting with his ex-wife, Anne Esterhazy, about their own "anomalous" child, Kott hears of the theories of Dr. Milton Glaub, a psychotherapist at Camp Ben-Gurion, an institution for those afflicted with pervasive developmental disorders.
For this task, Kott leases (and eventually buys out) Bohlen's contract from his current employer so that he can work on building the device full-time.
The narrative turns to the perspective of Manfred, who is afraid of a future only he can see, in which he is a decrepit old man, confined to a bed on life-support, living in a derelict medical compound called AM-WEB, a dumping ground for forgotten people like him.
Meanwhile, Bohlen's father, Leo—a wealthy land speculator from Earth—arrives to stake a claim to the seemingly worthless Franklin D. Roosevelt mountain range after receiving an insider tip that the United Nations plans to build a huge apartment complex there.
[2] On an earlier repair assignment, Bohlen was sent to service the simulacra at the Public School, where lessons are taught by robotic simulations of historical figures.
Bohlen shows Kott the future drawing by Manfred and explains that his father was the speculator from Earth, who has already registered his purchase of the entire FDR Range.
The episode is actually previewed three times, in successive chapters, from each character's perspective (though partly through Manfred's eyes—and possibly Bohlen's), before it actually occurs in the narrative's real timeline.
When the events of the story finally reach the crucial point where Bohlen explains the bad news (something he intensely fears after having foreseen a deadly outcome), he himself does not experience it (or at least, he cannot remember it later).
Heliogabalus explains that, from Manfred's point of view, (Earth) humans are strange beings who live in a world of fractured time where they disappear from one place and reappear in another and otherwise move in a jerky, uncoordinated manner.
Kott centers his interest in altering the past on two goals: revenge on Bohlen and claiming the FDR mountains before his father, Leo, does.
Heliogabalus also explains that Manfred will only help him if Kott promises to send him back to Earth, changing the future so he never ends up in the horrifying AM-WEB building.
Kott takes Manfred on the pilgrimage to "Dirty Knobby" and is transported back in time, to the point where he first appeared in the novel (emerging from a sybaritic bath-house run by the Union).
He soon finds himself repeating the actions that led him to meet Bohlen while simultaneously dealing with perceptual distortions (essentially Manfred's cold, dark perception of reality).
In a subdued final scene, Bohlen and his father are out searching for Steiner's widow in the darkness, with voices "business-like and competent and patient", apparently intent on helping Manfred say goodbye to his mother.
Elena Corioni[7] argues that Martian Time-Slip was ahead of its time in terms of its handling of climate change.