The narrative alternates between separate narratives. One is reality, an Argentine woman confined to a Mexican
sanatorium in the 1970s. The others are a representation of her
unconscious. In this second narrative, the woman is in
Central Europe in the years leading up to
World War II. She is here involved in various intrigues, and carries on an extramarital romance. The third narrative, another representation of the protagonist's unconscious, is a science fiction tale involving a cyborg woman named W218 in a post-apocalyptic Polar Age, who serves the government by performing sexual therapy on aging men, and is therefore in a sense a government-sponsored prostitute. == References ==