Plot: 5/9. A horrible first contact disturbing the routine was dispelled by Gordon alone at the cost of his sanity.
Gordon Collier lived a monotonous life in an excellent virtual world along with his bogus wife Helen. They welcomed their only neighbor Barton and Mary Walters, also a bogus couple, to have dinner together. This virtual world, located under an air bubble in Ganymede millions away from the Earth, only had them four who pretended to be a society and followed a predetermined schedule for seven months. At midnight, upon hearing something strange, Gordon and Barton then checked the equipment house and a streak from the space to the ice appeared on the radar charts. They all assumed that was just a meteor.
Next morning, when Gordon was awakened by a noise and found something was coming from the ice towards them, he was discombobulated and unable to do anything for help since they were actually deserted by human beings. Therefore he went home and dissimulated everything was fine. The Collier still visited the Walters on schedule to escape from the current situation.
Although the storm outside, their tempered simulation system, screams and the real rain which was supposed not to be here all foreboded a imminent disaster.
At midnight, There was an impossible knock on the door.
Their unsolicited guest turned out to be an alien who claimed to bypass there and said hello. Humans to the alien were preliminary to food. It projected some scenes to Gordon about human’s frenzied colonization towards unsuitable hostile planets and at the same time mocked he was so inadaptable to the space travel that he would go mad without the farce.
Gordon didn’t believe it an alien. The alien then showed his intimidating prototype and formidable plan of invading the Earth. Gordon recovered from astonishment and soon realized the alien’s gimmicks was here to scarce him into surrender. Indeed, it metamorphosed and escaped immediately at the very same moment that Gordon touched it.
Five months later, Gordon was still losing his sanity and had to be isolated from people alone on the Earth. People were confused why a meteor unnerved them so.
Core: 3/9. First contact + Mockery on people’s frenzied dream towards the space + hero without name
But why were they, who could not sustain the loneliness in a healthy way, picked out intentionally for the space travel? Didn’t they accept some simulation of isolation on Earth when emergency happened? What on Earth did the Earth want to send them here?
Character: 2/9. All characters were tedious and illogic including Gordon who did the final feat. The women here were literally the vase.
World and Others: 3/9. What triggered me most were the contradiction between the expensive space expedition and the poor life of the ordinary and the unnerving status where people have to pretend nothing really wrong when they have no ability to cope with the trouble.
But I cannot understand how the unreasonable rain and storm came but the bubble still hold the air.
If the alien indeed wanted to kill or threatened man, it simply could destroy the ventilation system that supported human beings.
Plus, I didn’t understand anything useful for the bubble from the perspective of war.