After a young man breaks up with his girlfriend, he has an encounter with an old Chinese man who tells him about the I Ching and gives him a message about freeing himself from fate. He takes a job working with unemployed youth and has to learn how to relate to them at the same time as dealing with a vexing co-worker and a management committee where the self-serving, the brutal, the scheming and the inept often hold sway. He experiences being sacked as the president seeks to demonstrate his power, but he is reinstated and gains a new co-worker, who brings new zest and direction to the project. They engage with the explosive anger of one of the young men, and the pervasive atmosphere of apathy and disillusionment. One youth is killed, and the two workers strive to show the community how to find hope. Things come to a head at the annual Bachelors and Spinsters Ball. Everyone turns up, some to play out ugly old myths again, and some to create new myths, even if by accident.