The Liquid Oxygen
- Kelvin is lying in the dark looking at his watch; he reaches for Rheya, but she's not there.
- Instead, Gibarian comes in. (The real Gibarian? A dream? Another visitor? We don't know.)
- Gibarian tells him that Sartorius and Snow have realized that Kelvin was fooling them about the possibility of the visitors blowing up.
- Kelvin wakes up, but Gibarian's voice seems to be going on (it's the tape that Kelvin hid under the bed, remember?).
- Anyway, Rheya is there when he wakes up, and he drifts back off.
- In the morning, Kelvin discovers the tape recorder is missing from under the bed, but he doesn't discuss it with Rheya because he doesn't want to quarrel.
- He notices a change in Rheya's behavior, but isn't sure what the cause is.
- Because the Gibarian vision warned him to be on guard, he goes looking for a weapon in the station, without much success.
- Rheya tells him she thinks that he's lying to her, which he is, but he won't say anything. It's a classic lovers' quarrel scene.
- Shift to nighttime, Kelvin sleeping again.
- He wakes up to find that Rheya has drunk liquid oxygen—she killed herself, just like she killed herself in real life.
- The effects are horrific… but it doesn't kill her. She's one tough simulacra/alien life form/horrible memory, Rheya is.
- Rheya is really upset that she didn't kill herself, especially since it proves she's some sort of non-human thing.
- Kelvin tries to convince her that he loves her, the non-human thing, and doesn't care about the dead Rheya who is somewhere else.
- Rheya is skeptical, though, and she explains that she listened to Gibarian's tape, which explained that she's created by the ocean to test the humans. Or for some reason, anyway.
- She says she wants to die.
- Kelvin says it's good that she's different because it means the liquid oxygen didn't kill her.
- Kelvin seems to more or less convince Rheya that he loves her. He says he can't even remember the old Rheya anymore.