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John Anderton, the head commissioner of Precrime, is none too pleased to meet his new assistant, Ed Witwer. He is convinced that Witwer wants to take his job. Nevertheless, he gives Witwer a tour of the Precrime Division at the police precinct. Precrime works to stop a crime before it happens using the help of mutants called precogs. These precogs can see two weeks into the future, predicting major crimes before they happen. They spend their lives hooked up to a computer, unable to think or function beyond their precognitive abilities because the mutation deforms other parts of their brain. When a murder is predicted, a card is sent both to Precrime and to the Army as a check on Precrime’s power. Anderton looks over a stack of prediction cards. To his horror, he sees his own name. Anderton is convinced Witwer somehow planted his name in the computer to frame him and steal his job.
Anderton runs into his wife, a Precrime officer named Lisa. When he sees Lisa greet Witwer, he fears that Lisa is part of Witwer’s plan. Anderton excuses himself, but Lisa follows him. He confides in Lisa that Witwer is trying to take his job. Witwer was previously part of the Senate, and this all could be an attempt for the Senate to secure control over the police. After all, it would be easy to convince the world that Anderton intends to kill his future replacement—Witwer—out of jealousy. While Lisa believes Anderton wouldn’t kill anyone, she doesn’t believe Witwer is plotting against him. She points out that the name of the victim on the card is not Ed Witwer, but Leopold Kaplan, a man Anderton doesn’t know. With only a short time before his potential crime is revealed, Anderton plans to escape to a colony planet. He goes home to pack but is accosted at gunpoint and brought before Leopold Kaplan himself. Kaplan is not a random person, but a former high-ranking general in the Army before demilitarization.
Kaplan demands to know why Anderton wants to kill him. Anderton protests his innocence and explains Witwer’s supposed plot. As an alarm broadcasts Anderton’s escape, Kaplan decides not to risk his life and orders soldiers to turn Anderton in. On the way back to the police station, one of Kaplan’s men starts to suggest that perhaps Anderton’s innocence is a sign of corruption in Precrime and that the system is rotten. At this point, Anderton doesn’t know what to believe. Suddenly, the car crashes into a truck. In the wreckage, a man named Fleming approaches Anderton. Fleming claims he’s part of a group that wants to help Anderton. He confirms that both Witwer and Lisa are plotting against Anderton and gives him the papers he needs to set up a fake identity. The papers are wrapped in a mysterious note that says, “The existence of a majority logically implies a corresponding minority.”
