Max Booth is an 11-year-old shadie urchin living in the year 2424, struggling to survive. With the chance to make some money by uncovering the secrets of mysterious gadgets from the 20th century for the Bluggsville City Museum, Max and his faithful, but slightly neurotic, robo-dog Oscar start investigating. They have been asked to identify an object that's baffling everyone - a 1980s cassette tape. But there's more to this tape than meets the eye....

A tiny piece of paper from the year 2019 might not sound very interesting to most people. But Max and Oscar, who are Bluggsville's sharpest sleuths, aren't most people! Max has a hunch that this ancient patch of paper might be valuable and extremely rare. Max is right. This isn't just any old piece of paper. It's a strange, sticky thing called a postage stamp, and it's more than 400 years old! It's an exciting discovery, but before long, it leads...

Max and Oscar are given a pet ID microchip to identify. A rice-sized electronic device, Max has never seen anything quite like it. Using an ancient library book scanner, he obtains a reading from it. It's a mysterious code, with the Bluggsville City logo beside it. Max and Oscar uncover the identity of the dog it was assigned to and are determined to find out why the chip was never implanted. Oscar, smitten by the dog in the photo, is especially eager....