In 2000, Orion is a 25-year-old software developer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He lives with his girlfriend of five years, Molly, whom he met at Harvard. She is currently an intern at a hospital, meaning she’s exhausted every moment that she isn’t at work and has no time for Orion. When Molly’s parents, Carl and Deborah visit, they ask Orion when he’s planning on proposing to Molly. He doesn’t know why he hasn’t asked yet; he certainly has the money, given the success of his tech company, ISIS, and they’ve hit the point at their lives where engagement is appropriate. Molly’s father is a famous physicist, which reminds Orion of how he formerly wanted to pursue physics before realizing he wasn’t good at it. As soon as they arrive home, Molly asks Orion for milk and then passes out with exhaustion. Orion leaves for work. At work, Orion is yelled at by his cofounders for an interview that he gave. He bursts out of his friend’s office and sees some other employees mocking an English M.A. student, Sorel, for having crashed the system. Sorel's currently interning at Orion's company, and she's the scapegoat of the other engineers. The other engineers plop a rubber chicken onto her desk to punish her for what she's done. Orion shoos them all away and pulls an all-nighter with Sorel to fix the bug. Then, they go out to the river to drown the rubber chicken. Orion seems ready to kiss Sorel, but then she mentions that she’s studying physics, which reminds him of Molly. He breaks away to go home, but he stops at the store first, picking up random foods but forgetting Molly’s milk.