Visiting one of the Pluto’s moons, Charon, on a short vacation from his training duties for a deep-space maintenance mission, main character encounters the Even that is a signal from the Others. The signal is mysterious and lacking any scientific concreteness so the humanity decides to mount a mission to investigate its source – a planet that’s about 180 light years away.

Main character describes his deep-space maintenance mission and how its purpose was to fly to a distant space station to fix a computer that has learned the meaning of passing time. The Even complicated plans as the relevance of that mission greatly diminished in light of the new mission to investigate the epochal occurrence of finally meeting the Others.

Main character lobbies to get on the mission to the distant planet while trying to find out what motivates one to journey to a place detached from reality of today.

The crew  is chosen. The flights is on.

The night before the take off, main character wanders outside of the security zone of the hotel to gather textures of “today” for the future when he’s to return Home in over 360 years.

Wanting to be among people, he takes a train to visit his father. His father prepares a “time capsule,” leaving inside a letter for his return.