Lizzie O'Brien is one of three astronauts from NAFTASA on Titan collecting scientific data and samples. She is traveling by air balloon along the surface of Titan when her harness gets jammed. Initially she is mildly annoyed at the hubbub and logistical drudgery that this causes, but then she begins to panic when she realizes that the situation means certain death for her. Moreover, she has started to fall asleep uncontrollably and often, and her dreams are vivid and surreal, of an underwater city, where a being seems to speak to her. She tries to focus on the data coming in from their aquatic robot-fish, which has found a beautiful organic sculpture deep underwater, but is still understandably upset. Lizzie's dreams feature more communication, with what seems to be a disembodied sentient being, and she explains her knowledge of the universe to it, which causes it to become panicked and excited. She realizes that all her dreams have been sequential, which means that she has in fact been communicating with a form of life—intelligent alien life. At one point while she is awake, Lizzie asks for a priest, having been raised Catholic. She gets one, and confesses that she has been in contact with intelligent life, but the audio somehow gets leaked to the Internet, leading to angry and excited messages from all kinds of people online.
In a final contact with the alien intelligence, Lizzie realizes that they are experiencing a kind of culture shock, overloaded by the information that Lizzie dumped onto it. The intelligence tells her that it is preparing to die, for what else is there to do, but Lizzie transmits to it all of her best memories and emotions and recollections of beauty and convinces it not to die. Then when she wakes up, she finds herself involuntarily moving, disconnecting herself from her chute and diving into the sea below. The intelligence communicated its gratitude for her information, and Lizzie begs it to save her. The intelligence sends the scientists' robot-fish to her, and helps her ride it towards the surface. On the way, Lizzie asks it to tell her the knowledge it has that humans might not know, and it obliges.