Listen to an old fart: It doesn't usually take six centuries for a boy to grow up.

Josh wants only to get along and help his grandfather, Big Daddy, with the old man's odd gadgets like the time gadget installed in the 1966 Mustang. But simply getting along is more difficult when you're the son of a federal arms negotiator who renounces her U.S. citizenship to become an official of the New Republic of Hawaii, hoping ultimately to negotiate world peace.

When tiny African country Durban explodes a weapon into the atmosphere that changes the earth's racial makeup, other nations gear up their own not-so-passive artillery, bringing on Armageddon.

Seeing no other chance for survival, Josh uses Big Daddy's time gadget for him and Keala, his Hawaiian-Japanese girlfriend, to escape to the future, landing in an alien world centuries later that ends up looking a lot like home.