After a cosmonaut returns from a failed mission, he arrives to intense scrutiny towards the covert nature of his mission and his apparent ties with Russian intelligence. A THEORIST presents their version of events: to consider how flight engineer SOKOLOV managed to survive in conditions with no means of sustenance and with no sensory stimuli - the theorist further questions how this incubatory state had affected Sokolov’s thought processes and whether the void he seemed to be heading towards became an unchartered form of existence and possibly not one that humanity was ready for.