Today is an even weirder day than usual for the Lost Light, as the ship has suddenly found itself being chased by the planet Earth. Attempting to make contact, the only response the ship receives is a catchy song about "Swerve's", so Megatron tries to call the bartender to the bridge, with no success. The reason why is soon made horrifyingly apparent: just as Tailgate is giving First Aid a going-away present for his trip back to Cybertron, Skids bursts into the medibay with the comatose Swerve in his arms. A quick examination by First Aid and Velocity can detect no surface wounds, but Swerve is so weak that exploratory surgery to find the cause of his condition will kill him. Everyone recalls that Swerve was fine just the previous day at his bar, but Nightbeat deduces that the Swerve they all saw there, who disappeared, was actually a holomatter projection—and morever, so is the entire Earth, all somehow being impossibly generated by Swerve, where his mind has taken refuge. Tailgate, Skids, Cyclonus, Rung, and Bluestreak project their own avatars down to "Swearth" (as Rodimus dubs it) to set up a base of operations and begin searching for Swerve so he can tell them where he is injured, and his life can be saved.

The team finds that the facsimile Earth is constructed out of tropes from Earth sitcoms, a product of Swerve's recent consumption of the entirety of Earth's arts and literature. Setting up base in a New York apartment, Rung, Bluestreak, and Skids go out searching, but get waylaid dealing with the escapades of their wacky neighbours. Tailgate, meanwhile, busies himself reading the only piece of literature on the planet, More than Meets the Eye, a comic book version of the Lost Light's adventures. Just as he reaches a part of the story unfamiliar to the others—the fact that Swerve opened Brainstorm's briefcase in issue #21—neighbours Ted the priest, Sheldon the dermatologist, and Jerry the stand-up comedian pay a visit to meet Cyclonus and Tailgate. They soon start bickering about past episodes, and Skids is grateful of the chance to shut them up when Rodimus calls in to check up. He, Megatron, Nightbeat, and Nautica have also projected their avatars into the city to help with the search, and after getting up to speed with the farcical ways the planet functions—including its own laugh track—they begin searching nearby bars for any leads to Swerve's location.

Ted, Sheldon, and Jerry, it turns out, have locked themselves out of their apartment, and as Bluestreak works on opening their door for them, Skids confides to Rung that he did not even know what room Swerve lived in onboard the ship; he had only found him by remembering which hab-suite Swerve's old roommate Red Alert had lived in. Swerve had, he reveals, actually been locked in his room for months, his body slowly degrading, interacting with others only through avatars, and nobody ever came to visit him. Hoping for a clue, Tailgate jumps to the newest issue of More than Meets the Eye, where the recap page narrated by Swerve explains what happened: exposure to the energies of Brainstorm's time-machine briefcase have created a time-loop in Swerve's holomatter systems, giving him the notionally impossible ability to project something as complex as the planet, which has been shaped into a world of fiction-made-real due to the metafictional awareness Swerve has been increasingly suffering from since he was hit with Brainstorm's meta-bomb. Realizing that the comic is a case of Swerve's subconscious trying to reach out to them, Rung looks for more such subtle clues... and finds one staring him right in the face, as Ted, Sheldon, and Jerry's apartment turns out to have the same number as Swerve's hab-suite. Rung speaks Swerve's name aloud, and the three men all turn around, then suddenly blur together, condensing into Swerve's familiar—if very surprised-looking—avatar.

Rodimus's team is in a nearby bar, talking about Earth and humans; Megatron is struggling to get to gri

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