A man wants to live in his birdhouse. His troubled child-prodigy daughter is both his only way into it and the only thing keeping him out.

During the 1980s the US is hit by a wave of nuclear attacks, and after the fallout those who remain pretend like everything is normal even though they are all experiencing radiation poisoning. A young girl named Mayday tries to make contact on a series of ham radios with her father who is in space on a shuttle mission.