On her 11th birthday in 2018, Alice finds a mysterious black box on the beach. She discovers it's called a C-Bean and imagines it belongs to her. Together with her five schoolmates - the only children on the newly re-inhabited remote island of St Kilda - they soon realise it has extraordinary powers and can transport them anywhere in the world. Before long, Alice and her friends find themselves immersed in all sorts of thrilling adventures, from Central Park to the Amazonian rainforest to the backstreets of Hong Kong, as they uncover danger and subterfuge threatening the world's eco-systems. With a stray dog and a garrulous parrot they seem to have acquired along the way, they overcome their fears as the C-Bean helps them unravel the mysteries of time and tides, understand the interconnectedness of all things, and in the process succeed in safeguarding the future of their tiny Scottish island.