After receiving a suspicious answer from the groundskeeper Carstairs, one of his father's most loyal workers, Vincent threatens to turn him in to the police.

In the letter, Norman explains his collaborations with various scientists to determine how to build a chamber which will shield him from cosmic rays[a] and a coma-inducing drug.

Once in the chamber, Norman will use the sleep-drug to fall into a coma where he “shall not awake until [he is] again subjected to radiation,” which will be provided by an X-ray lamp (similar to what one finds next to any dentist's chair) set to power on after five thousand years.

Realizing the success of his time travelling system, Norman explores the futuristic world briefly, and then returns to suspended animation, planning to wake again after another 5,000 years.

[2] The novel might be easily dismissed as standard pulp fare if it had not presaged concepts popularized decades later: the sexual revolution, green consumerism, strong AI, full-immersion virtual reality as a surgical procedure (like The Matrix), desktop molecular manufacturing, global warming, and stem cell therapies.