SOMA takes place in an underwater research facility called PATHOS-2. Some time after the surface of the earth was devastated by meteor collisions. Where the last human scientists survive on a day to day basis, fighting off their isolation. But soon, the machines in the facility begin to take on human characteristics, and consciousness. The main protagonist Simon Jarrett starts off in May 2015, where he was in a fatal car crash that killed his friend and passenger Ashley, and left him with severe brain damage and cranial bleeding. Jarrett agrees to an experimental brain scan in a run down medical lab, during which he blacks out, awakening in the Upsilon branch of PATHOS-2 with no knowledge of how he had gotten there.