Solaris

Kris wakes from a dream to find Rheya lying beside him. She asks how he is feeling. She cares for him and they lie together, drifting in and out of sleep. Rheya asks Kris about the space station, and he explains as little as possible. She accuses him of hiding something, which he denies. When he goes into the bathroom and closes the door, she panics. Rheya tears her way through the door and throws her arms around Kris, injuring her hands. As he cares for her hands, he discovers her wounds are already healing.

Kris decides to take Rheya to the laboratory and test the nature of her physical being. Once at the laboratory, Snow contacts them and says there will be a three-way video conference between the scientists to discuss the visitors. Kris takes a blood sample from Rheya and examines it: Her “blood” reconstitutes itself quickly, even when exposed to acid, and is possibly made up of neutrinos.

During the three scientists’ video conference, they try to be cautious as they see Rheya is present. Snow recommends that they call the visitors Phi-creatures. In describing the visitors, Kris notes Sartorius is resistant to his empirical observations. They discuss the interactive nature of the visitors, debating whether or not they are preprogrammed to act and behave in certain ways. Kris already knows the answer because of his interactions with Rheya.

Rheya wakes Kris in the middle of the night. She is crying that he does not want her. He is astonished at her ability to grasp the reality of their relationship. As Kris consoles Rheya, promising his love and honesty, he receives a note from Snow saying Sartorius discovered a way to use neutrinos to eliminate the visitors.

Kris launches into a lengthy discussion of a researcher named Giese, who studied the ocean’s mimoids (like visitors), the way they endure, and what can be learned of them. He compares them to symmetriads, mimoids which mimic structures: “It would be only natural, clearly, to propose to suppose that the symmetriad is a ‘computer’ of the living ocean performing calculations for a purpose that we are not able to grasp” (119). As he studies, Kris feels the station shake and realizes Sartorius has taken off in a space shuttle to eliminate visitors with his new device. Snow enters the room where Kris and Rheya are studying and discusses dealing with the visitors, while periodically glancing at Rheya.

Once again, Kris wakes from a dream in the middle of the night. He sees Gibarian and asks if he is dreaming. The specter replies that he is incarnated for a little while, implying he is a visitor who will soon retreat. Gibarian warns Kris that Sartorius and Snow are plotting against him, because they fear he is too attached to Rheya. Gibarian explains that the visitors are amplifiers who project human emotions, which humans themselves often cannot understand.

When he wakes, Kris asks Rheya what happened to the tape recorder he took from Gibarian’s room. She says she does not know. That night, Kris suddenly wakes, realizing Rheya is not with him. He goes into the laboratory and discovers she has inhaled pure liquid oxygen, which would destroy a human’s organs and kill them. While incapacitated, she slowly recovers. When Kris asks Rheya why she tried to take her own life, she says she realized she is not the original Rheya—having listened to Gibarian’s tape recorder. She knows she was created by Solaris and causes Kris pain, thus why she tried to die. Kris assures Rheya that he does love her, that she is different from the original Rheya.