On a seemingly quiet summer day, a mysterious pathogen is released upon a remote observatory in New Mexico, killing the sole technician on duty. A recovery team later finds the technician’s body with a note containing the last set of spatial coordinates the observatory’s telescope was pointed at, which the technician believes has triggered the end of days. The next morning, disgraced physics professor Theodore Kim finds himself on a spacecraft orbiting Saturn. With no recollection of how he got there, he tries to piece together his recruitment as part of an unwilling crew along with his longtime girlfriend, a retired physician, a Russian aviator, a zoologist, and a stay-at-home mother. Without explanation, the experimental craft known as the Moirae departs the galaxy for an unknown destination. Are they the last ark of humanity, sent to colonize some distant planet? Or have they been sent on a fool’s errand to search out God in the depths of space, as some of the crew believe? If so, why did they send Kim, a boozing agnostic, to do the talking?