Expressionistic drama
Mr. Zero, the eternal "little man," shallow yet possessing some dignity, murders his boss when he learns that, after twenty-five years of being a bookkeeper, he is to be replaced by an adding machine.
Condemned to death despite his piteous stream-of-consciousness appeal to the jury, he is executed and appears next in the Elysian Fields, where he meets and enjoys a brief idyll with Daisy, his deceased co-worker, whose love he had secretly desired. But conventional Mr. Zero cannot abide the freedom of paradise for long, and he leaves.
Confused by encounters with such people as Shrdlu, who cannot understand why after killing his mother he has been sent to heaven, Zero finds happiness while operating a heavenly adding machine. Presently, however, he is sent back to earth by a celestial overseer to be reborn, endure again his insignificant life, and die, a perpetual victim of a depersonalising world.