When asked whether the man's experiences had been a dream all along, Lynne responded: "This is what I'd like to know, because it's baffled me since I wrote it, if he has actually gone the future, or if he's just thinking about it. ... It could be real, or it could be a dream... I'm not sure. I'd rather not say, because I don't know either. I'm supposed to, but I don't." Mathews writes: "Like "Eldorado", "Time" contained a prologue and an epilogue ... Although there is hardly any plot to thread the various songs together, the theme remains largely intact ... they embellish, rather than engage." A recurring line that appears in the album's epilogue is: "though you ride on the wheels of tomorrow, you still wander the fields of your sorrow". Rockol's writer says that the protagonist revisits the place he once lived only to find that it has become unrecognisable ("The Way Life's Meant to Be"). Afterwards, he hopes that he may be able to return home with a time machine, "but with all their great inventions and all their good intentions, here I stay" ("Rain Is Falling"). Following his final attempt to return to the past, the protagonist is invited to "hold on" ("Hold On Tight").. With the addition of the three "missing" tracks, the album takes on a darker twist as the protagonist returns home only to find time has moved on and his girlfriend no longer lives at the home she once occupied "Julie Don't Live Here"