Observation

In the year 2026, the multi-national space station Observation orbits above Earth. An unknown event cripples Observation, leaving it without power. Dr. Emma Fisher, the station's medical officer, attempts to make contact with Houston and the five other crew members, but fails. Fisher reboots SAM, the station's integrated AI that controls Observation's systems and functions.

SAM receives a mysterious transmission that contains coordinates to an unknown location. Observation begins to tremor violently, knocking Emma out. Meanwhile, SAM receives instructions to "BRING HER". SAM's functionality returns with Emma's assistance before a fire alarm suddenly goes off. After extinguishing the fire, Emma discovers an unidentified, dark red, oil-like substance. Shortly after, another alarm goes off due to a dislodged module. Emma ejects it and orders SAM to assess external damage, and she is horrified to see that they are now in orbit over Saturn. Emma asks SAM to check the black box to figure out why, which reveals that SAM is the cause, but doesn't know how or why. SAM again receives interference from an unknown entity and deactivates.

Emma reboots SAM, who has been speaking gibberish. They access other parts of the station, finding the bodies of the other crew, including Jim, the mission commander. However, they find Mae to still be alive in a sealed module. They attempt to retrieve Mae with a spacewalk, but a Hexagonal cloud pattern on Saturn leaves Mae stranded. Emma finds a man-made object near Saturn's orbit. Emma initially believes it to be a rescue team, but instead discovers that it is an exact duplicate of Observation and its crew. A strange hexagonal object then appears to both SAM and Emma and communicates to them in a geographic glyph language before disappearing.

They board the second station, which has lost nearly all power due to a malfunction of the station's experimental Fusion Reactor. They find a still-living version of Jim, and learn that the crew experienced the same events that brought them to Saturn. As SAM goes to try to restore basic life support, he interacts with this station's SAM, and learns that, 4 years prior to the events of the game, 23 pairs of stars were discovered in which both stars within each pair had identical light curves. When lines were drawn to connect the pairs of stars, the lines intersected at an event marker close to Earth's position.

In addition, when the 23 light curve graphs were layered upon each other, the combined graph was found to contain a perfect description of the 23 chromosome pairs of the human genome. Jim reveals that the entire Observation station had been constructed solely to reach the event marker so the crew could observe what would happen, with Jim having been the only crew member aware of the mission.

Continuing on, SAM encounters another crew member, Josh, who has been hiding from Jim, as Jim has also killed his doppelgänger. Before Josh can reveal more, Jim grabs SAM and Emma, and makes them jump back to Emma's Observation. Jim locks Emma out of the station, claiming that "It wants her", leaving her on little life support. As she clings to life, several other identical Observation stations appear to start gathering around the storm.

Jim proceeds to lock SAM out of the controls while he sends a desperate message for help to Earth, becoming frustrated at their seemingly greater interest in Emma and SAM’s status instead of his own promised return to Earth. SAM manages to find several back doors into the station's systems, interacts with the signal to Earth and warns them about the situation. Earth cuts off Jim, who now knows SAM is to blame. As Jim tries to attack SAM's core, the core suddenly explodes into a large amount of dark red oil that infests the entire station. SAM is then ordered by the Hexagonal entity to kill Jim, and does so by locking him in a module that he then depressurizes.

SAM then hears Emma calling, and allows her to enter through the airlock. Emma has clearly been changed by her experience and now speaks in an eerily calm tone. She tells SAM she now knows that they need to get to the storm on Saturn, and has SAM adjust their orbit and jettison the rest of the station. They fall into the storm and black out.

When Emma wakes, they find themselves on a rocky landscape, with debris and various bodies of Emma from multiple copies of Observation around them. They approach a giant version of the hexagonal entity again and make contact. Emma tells a confused SAM that there must have been multiple realities all converging on this point, and they were the first version of Emma and SAM to make it through the ordeal. They disappear briefly into the hexagonal entity.

When they wake up, Emma and SAM find their consciousness has merged, allowing them to share a single body, and they are back on Earth by some means. They feel odd but alive, and by touching the ground, they are able to infect it with the dark red oil the same way the entity did to Observation. The combined Emma/SAM persona is then instructed to "BRING THEM".