Soma takes place in an underwater research facility known as PATHOS-2. While the station itself is now in a state of disrepair, it is quickly established that PATHOS-2 originally functioned as a "space gun," an installation designed to accelerate a launch vehicle to hypersonic velocities in order to enter orbit or escape from Earth's gravity. There, the last human scientists survive on a day-to-day basis, attempting to fight the negative effects of their collective isolation. During this period, the machines in PATHOS-2 begin to develop human characteristics and a consciousness. The main protagonist of Soma is named Simon Jarrett. His story begins May 2015, when he is in a fatal car crash that kills his friend Ashley and leaves Simon with severe brain damage and cranial bleeding. Because of lingering effects due to the accident, Simon agrees to an experimental brain scan in a run-down medical lab. During the scan, Simon appears to black out, and regains consciousness almost a century later in the Upsilon branch of PATHOS-2 with no knowledge of how he got there.
