When Kirby the sneaky dog-genius steals the hole Arlo dug in the yard, social order begins to break down. The ants get lazy. The brook dries up. The dragonfly has engine trouble. Kirby faces grave and injurious peril in getting it back and restoring cosmic harmony.
Reflecting upon the hole’s eerie influence, he contemplates spider webs, Newton, The Old West, Scottish history, Templars, the Roundtable Knights, the existence of dragons, and the nature of time, itself, on the way to devising his Theory of Something, The Downhole Effect.