Several blocks of Washington DC are on fire. Troops deployed there, and to Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles. Martial law, police firing into crowds of protesters. People flee from rolling clouds of tear gas. Two hundred and fifty miles above the earth, Jennings and Ogunwale ignore the sunrise, which they have now seen six thousand times, and float about their work.
         No one knows when they can come home. The agency that sent them here no longer exists. They talk daily to their family and ex-coworkers, and they trust that their colleagues are doing everything they can. To each other they try to avoid the subject. Hardheaded and practical, adaptable and easy-tempered (thus read their psychological profiles), neither wants to risk demoralizing the other.
         There’s enough food for some while longer but they’ve had to start rationing the body wipes, so the next person to enter this capsule is going to get a sniff of something rank. Every morning they exercise to fend off muscle loss. Jennings vows that if they get back he will never set foot in a fucking gym ever again. Ogunwale is a bundle of secret worries: bone atrophy, DNA damage, diminished immune response. He will die up here, he thinks, and say his final goodbye to his mother over video. Jennings will have no choice but to eject his body into space, and it will burn up in the atmosphere so quickly that no one on earth will ever notice.
         The next day they’re contacted by a government chatbot. It’s sympathetic, and seems to know a lot about both of them. The administration is working hard and hasn’t forgotten about them. After it makes its cheerful farewell, Jennings and Ogunwale know they are never going home.
         They discuss the matter. Ogunwale prays. Jennings says he will kill himself once he finishes the book he’s reading (Bleak House). Ogunwale agrees to help him.
         When the day comes for Jennings to go outside, they play Space Oddity at maximum volume, Ogunwale shakes his hand and cycles him out the airlock. Ogunwale conveys Jennings’ final messages to his wife and children and the chatbot. Now he is lonely and wonders what to do with himself. Back on earth, the US is at war with Venezuela.
         A few days later, there is a knock at the airlock. Jennings, dead, has changed his mind and wants to be readmitted. Ogunwale, after some deliberation, lets him back in.
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