Fact1: Rethrick proposes lengthy three-year reverse engineering job to Jennings requiring him to live on Allcom 's secured campus until conclusion but, Fact2: Jennings after arranging for long-term absence at is given brief tour of facility Dr. Rachel Porter Allcom, Fact3: personal possessions have been replaced with envelope containing random assortment of everyday items, Fact4: items in envelope be used at right time to evade capture, Fact5: real Porter helps Jennings escape from both FBI and Rethrick 's men
Output: In the near future, Michael Jennings Affleck is a reverse engineer; he analyzes his clients competitors technology and recreates it, often adding improvements beyond the original specifications. To protect his clients intellectual property and himself, Jennings, with the aid of his friend Shorty Giamatti, undertakes a memory wipe to remove knowledge of his engineering. Jennings is approached by his old college roommate, James Rethrick Eckhart, the CEO of the successful Seattle technology company Allcom. Rethrick proposes a lengthy threeyear reverse engineering job to Jennings, requiring him to live on Allcoms secured campus until its conclusion but rewarding him handsomely with company stock. Jennings agrees and, after arranging for his longterm absence, arrives at Allcom, turns in his personal possessions, and is given a brief tour of the facility where he meets and flirts with botanist Dr. Rachel Porter Thurman. He is injected with a longterm memory marker for the postjob memory wipe. Three years later, at the conclusion of his memory wipe, Jennings is sitting in Rethricks office, being thanked for a successful job. On returning home, Jennings finds that, although his Allcom shares would have been worth around 92 million, he had signed them away near the end of his tenure. Furthermore, he finds that his personal possessions have been replaced with an envelope containing a random assortment of everyday items. Soon after, the FBI detains him, and Agent Dodge Morton accuses him of filing patent applications based on classified designs they suspect Rethrick purchased from physicist William Dekker, who was subsequently murdered. Jennings is able to escape from custody, finding that items in the envelope can be used at the right time to evade capture. More than that, a fortune cookie message with winning lottery numbers indicates that these items are based on information from the future. After warning Shorty of his plight, Jennings finds items pointing him to a cafe meeting with Porter. Rethrick, who has been watching Jennings movements, discovers a message to Porter about this meeting and sends a body double to take her place to try to recover the envelope. The real Porter shows up and helps Jennings escape from both the FBI and Rethricks men. The two take shelter at a local school, examining the remaining items in the envelope while Porter tries to convince Jennings of the relationship they shared during his tenure at Allcom. One of the stamps holds a microdot that, on enlargement, reveals several pictures of newspaper headlines taken from a machines display: Allcom becoming financially successful with a device that can depict future events, but the world reacting to the catastrophic forecasts in ways that fulfill their outcomes, resulting in financial panic, political strife and America launching a preemptive nuclear strike. Jennings realizes he must have built this device based on Dekkers invention and, on realizing the horrors that will come, prepared the envelope, using the forecasts from the machine to allow his future self to return to Allcom and destroy the machine. Furthermore, as Rethrick discovers, Jennings rigged the device to malfunction, preventing Rethrick from anticipating Jennings actions. Jennings and Porter return to Allcom and make their way to the machine room detected but not interrupted, jamming the door behind them. Jennings determines the location of the defective circuit and removes it, subsequently rigging the machine to explode in a few minutes. Jennings uses the machine one last time, seeing a vision of himself being shot by an FBI agent in the catwalks above the machine. Soon, Rethricks men storm the room and, after a brief shootout, Jennings and Porter escape to the catwalks. Rethrick is waiting there, holding them at gunpoint, the same tableau from the machine. When Jennings watch, taken from the envelope, beeps, Jennings ducks in time to avoid the FBI Agents bullet that then kills Rethrick. The machine is destroyed, and Jennings and Porter escape in the chaos. Agent Dodge, surveying the destruction, shows sympathy for Jennings by reporting him killed in the explosion. In the films conclusion, Jennings, Porter, and Shorty have opened a greenhouse nursery. Jennings recalls a fortune cookie note from the envelope and discovers one last act he had done with the machine, foreseeing the results of a 90 million lottery and leaving the winning ticket in Porters birdcage.