In the bizarre
cyberpunk future of the mid-21st century, Qohen Leth, an eccentric and reclusive
programmer who refers to himself in the plural, works crunching "entities" for the
ontological research division of a large company called Mancom. He does not like having to leave the quiet, fire-damaged church in which he lives to travel the bright, crowded, and polluted streets and work in a noisy office and fears missing a mysterious phone call he has been expecting for years, so he requests disability leave or permission to work from home. Though he points to the fact that all of his hair has fallen out as evidence he is dying, three company doctors determine he is physically healthy but they do require he start sessions with Dr. Shrink-
Rom, an
AI therapist. Qohen attends a party thrown by his supervisor, Joby, so he can talk to Management, their boss. He requests permission to work from home, saying he would be more productive and mentioning his call, which he says he hopes will provide his life with a purpose. Management at first calls Qohen "insane" but later says he has a special project for Qohen that he thinks might prove mutually beneficial. The project is the "Zero Theorem", an extremely complex mathematical formula with a reputation for quickly exhausting or killing anyone who tries to solve it. Qohen spends months locked in his home working on it and becomes increasingly deranged, as the "entities refuse to remain crunched" and Mancom's demands for processed data are relentless. In frustration, he smashes his work station with a hammer, destroying it permanently. Joby comes by to check on Qohen and says he knows someone he thinks can help. He sends over Bainsley, a young woman Qohen had met at Joby's party, who knocks on Qohen's door dressed in a latex nurse's uniform. She tidies the place up a bit and they talk, and Qohen confides that the call he is waiting for is a call-back from someone he once accidentally hung up on who he believes will tell him the
meaning of life. Saying she will be right back, Bainsley leaves. Bob, the teenage son of Management, visits Qohen to repair his computer. Qohen says he has decided to quit but Bob tells him Management is not done with him, so he cannot. Ambivalent toward his father, Bob reveals that Bainsley was paid to spend time with Qohen and then offers to get Qohen his call, if he agrees to continue to work on the Zero Theorem. When Bainsley returns, she gives Qohen an advanced
VR suit, and they arrange to meet up through her website. Qohen clicks on a link and finds himself, with hair, on a virtual beach with Bainsley. He is concerned that it is not real but she assures him it is "better than real" and they end up kissing. The next day, Bob visits Qohen again. He explains that proving the Zero Theorem will prove life is meaningless, which Qohen does not want to believe. Unable to focus on work, he virtually meets with Bainsley again. He is troubled that the Sun never sets on her beach, so she invites him to imagine an environment for them to inhabit, and he ends up sending them to a vortex around a
black hole that has been haunting his dreams. Back on the beach, Bainsley comforts Qohen and they embrace, but when he suggests they stay in the virtual world together and denounces Management, he is forcefully disconnected from the system and his VR suit is remotely destructed. When Qohen goes to Bainsley's website at an unplanned time, he discovers her performing as a
webcam stripper and she logs off abruptly upon noticing his presence. He later returns to the site and finds his
IP address has been blacklisted, preventing him from accessing the site. Weeks later, Bob returns with Qohen's VR suit, which he says he has turned into a "prototype soul-searching device". Bob gets Dr. Shrink-Rom to confirm that the phone call Qohen is waiting for is a delusion but says the upgraded suit has the ability to connect Qohen with his soul, assuming he has one. Bainsley arrives and says that, while she initially agreed to seduce Qohen because Joby said she could keep her VR suit if she did so, she developed real feelings for Qohen. She offers to run away with him but Qohen turns her down. He and Bob take a break from work and go to a park, where Qohen reveals he was once married. Back at the church, Bob's health declines rapidly, and Qohen cares for him. Once Bob is asleep, Qohen finds and smashes the cameras Management hid throughout the building. Two of Management's employees break in and take Bob away and, later, Joby drops by to blame Qohen for getting him fired. Once alone, Qohen dons his upgraded VR suit and tries to connect to his computer but there is a problem and he is electrocuted. Finding himself in front of the Neural Net Mainframe, a massive supercomputer that is the destination for all of the entities crunched by the employees of Mancom, Qohen is greeted by Management, who tells him Bob has been hospitalized due to a chronic illness. Qohen asks if Management is real or just in his mind and is told that it does not matter, as he is now part of the Neural Net. He asks what the point of his life is, but Management says he does not know, as Mancom is still crunching the data. Management then explains that he believes that the universe came from, exists in, and will eventually return to nothing but chaos. The ultimate goal of the Zero Theorem was to prove, and then profit from, the universe’s constant chaotic state. Qohen was chosen to work on the Zero Theorem because his obsession with receiving his phone call demonstrated that he was a man of faith, which represented the antithesis of Management's project. Unfortunately, Management says, the faith that led Qohen to spend his life waiting for the phone call he believed would give his life meaning caused him to live a meaningless life. After saying he no longer requires Qohen's services, Management disappears. Qohen destroys the Neural Net, which blows open, revealing the black hole vortex from his nightmare inside, though now there are countless pictures, including one of Bainsley, swirling toward the center. He begins to walk away, but turns back and smiling, jumps into the vortex. Alone on the virtual beach, a calm, naked (and still-bald) Qohen stands looking out to sea. He goes over to where he had a picnic with Bainsley and picks her bikini top up off the sand. A beach ball floats by, and he throws it up in the air a few times before he does the same thing with the Sun, which then sets. Mixed in with the music as the credits begin, Bainsley can be heard calling Qohen's name and laughing. ==Cast==