A man is strapped into a vessel to be transported a long distance across space. He is seated in a chair and put to sleep; he is supposed to remain in hibernation for the duration of the flight. Due to a storage system failure, he is awakened far before he reaches his destination. Even though he now remains “unstored” for the rest of the trip, the onboard computer tells him that he will not die. The man is still strapped to his chair, unable to move, but the computer will feed him intravenously through the chair, and will stimulate his muscles and nerves so he will not atrophy. The computer, however, has no music or entertainment to provide him. The man becomes fixated with a smear he sees between his faceplate and the vessel’s bulkhead. He tries to ask the computer what he is seeing, but the computer merely responds that he is looking at the inside of his faceplate or the bulkhead. The man starts hearing another voice—distinct from the computer’s but following similar patterns of response. As years pass by, the man finds it increasingly difficult to distinguish himself, the computer, and the voice inside his head, and becomes more and more obsessed with the smear. In addition, he notices that his body has withered away—the computer is feeding him barely enough to survive. Feeling intense depersonalization, he frees himself from the chair—losing his access to food and muscle stimulation—and crawls across the deck to get a better look at the smear. He sees his own reflection on the wall of the ship and smiles. When the ship finally arrives at its destination, two technicians come on board to find the man dead, tangled up in the tubes and wires that connected him to the chair, having completely bled out. As one technician leaves the ship, the other stays behind—noticing a smear just past the rim of his own helmet.