In May 2015, protagonist Simon Jarrett is involved in a fatal car crash in Toronto that kills his girlfriend Ashley and leaves Simon with severe brain damage and cranial bleeding. Because of lingering effects from the accident, Simon agrees to an experimental brain scan performed by graduate student David Munshi. During the scan, Simon appears to black out, and regains consciousness almost a century later in the Site Upsilon branch of PATHOS-II, a seemingly abandoned underwater research facility, with no knowledge of how he got there. Shortly after he wakes up, Simon begins to communicate with someone named Catherine, who instructs him to come to her location in Lambda station. While exploring PATHOS-II, Simon learns that he woke up in the year 2104. In 2103, a massive comet had devastated Earth's surface, leaving PATHOS-II as the last outpost of humanity. Along the way to Site Lambda, Simon meets a robot that believes it is human, as well as numerous other robots that are hostile to him.