Political disputes on Earth reach the station in the form of posted rules: Russian cosmonauts are meant to use only the Russian toilet, while the American, European, and Japanese astronauts are meant to use the US one. The crew turns the idea into jokes, and mission control watches them ignore the edicts anyway, unable to enforce separation in a place where everything must be shared.

Drifting together, the crew reflects on how years of constant travel and training have already made them people who belong nowhere in order to get here. In orbit, national boundaries feel absurd: the crew cannot truly be divided because their survival depends on mutual reuse and exchange, down to recycled air and recycled urine.

In the lab, they run a virtual-reality cognitive test guided by a warm, encouraging voice. They estimate how long a blue square appears, try to hold it in sight for set durations, and measure reaction times. They also attempt timed counting tasks, but their sense of duration slips and varies.

As they work, Earth scrolls past: America appears and rolls away; the craft crosses the equator; the moon’s lit edge seems to flip; starfields thin as their view changes. Dawn arrives in familiar stages over Venezuela, sunlight spiking and then pouring across the curve of the planet.

The encouraging voice turns cutting in implication as their repeated errors suggest time and body-awareness are warping in microgravity. The chapter lingers on how orbit makes time elastic and disorienting as continents appear and vanish—Europe, then Russia, then Asia—until day drains away. At dusk the horizon blurs, and Earth seems to dissolve into darkness like a washed-out watercolour.