P.J. Lurz, an industrialist with an office in a Berlin high-rise, informs his American headquarters that the company has difficulty selling its security-related computer systems to the West German government in Bonn. Nevertheless Lurz has hatched a secret plan to boost sales. Meanwhile Susanne, Lurz’s secretary, receives a phone call with the message: The world as will and idea. This is a code phrase among a secret group of thirty-something middle-class leftists and would-be terrorists to which she belongs. The phrase has been taken from the central work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, ''The World as Will and Representation''. With these words, Susanne sets an ambiguous covert plot into motion, alerting the members of the terrorist cell of an upcoming meeting. They are: August Brem, the ringleader; Susanne's composer husband Edgar; feminist history professor Hilde Krieger; Petra Vielhabor, a housewife who is constantly arguing with her banker husband Hans; and Rudolf Mann, a clerk in a record store.