Five years after the mad terrorist Norman Galagher was sentenced to holographic stasis, he is given a parole hearing. But an equipment failure engineered by his cronies transforms the criminal into a living hologram with god-like powers. Now, stopping him is up to Kurt Decoda, the man who as a police rookie was responsible for arresting Galagher.

Alan Clay, a struggling American businessman, travels to Saudi Arabia to sell a new technology to the King, only to be challenged by endless Middle Eastern bureaucracy, a perpetually absent monarch, and a suspicious growth on his back.