Twelve-year-old Johnny endures tensions between his parents, watches television coverage of the Gulf War, and plays a computer game called Only You Can Save Mankind, in which he is increasingly drawn into the reality of the alien ScreeWee.

Thirteen-year-old Johnny Maxwell acquires the neighborhood homeless woman's shopping cart when she is injured and discovers that its contents have the ability to send him back in time from 1996 to 1941 England.