After a young soldier sides with a troupe of travelling actors in a fist fight that erupted while they are performing a play, he is forced to flee and the troupe decides to take him in.
The scene is an alternative Budapest, with a special kind of dictatorship controlled by a company group called the Golden Dimension. Lens is dark, cynical character of this world. With his special ability, he can burn the pictures of the past and the future into photosensitive paper. He sells his ability as an outlaw private detective or cheap showman.