Aliens visit Earth across six locations and depart without making contact, leaving behind mysterious artifacts in each Zone.

Redrick Schuhart works as a lab assistant at the Harmont Institute under the brilliant Russian scientist Kirill Panov.

Kirill and Redrick enter the Zone in a hovercraft on an official Institute excursion to retrieve a rare artifact called a full empty.

While loading the full empty onto the hovercraft, Kirill's back accidentally touches a mysterious silver cobweb substance in the garage.

Kirill dies of a sudden heart attack shortly after returning from the Zone and completing decontamination protocols.

On the way home from the bar, Redrick encounters Guta, who announces she is pregnant and refuses to have an abortion.

Vulture Burbridge accidentally steps in a puddle of corrosive hell slime during a Zone excursion with Redrick.

As hell slime eats away at his legs, Vulture promises to reveal the location of the legendary Golden Sphere if Redrick saves him.

Redrick delivers Vulture to a doctor, but the Vulture loses both legs below the knees to amputation.

Captain Quarterblad forces Redrick to reveal his briefcase full of Zone contraband and wads of cash at the Borscht tavern.

Redrick calls Raspy to reveal the hidden hell slime's location and instructs him to give all sale proceeds to Guta.

Redrick returns home after three years in prison to find the Monkey has deteriorated into an animalistic, inhuman state.

The Monkey and Redrick's living corpse father emit haunting animalistic cries at each other in the dark apartment.

Arthur Burbridge runs toward the Golden Sphere and shouts a wish for free universal happiness before the grinder kills him.

Unable to form his own wish at the Golden Sphere, Redrick repeats Arthur's cry for free happiness for everyone.

The story begins with the aftermath of an alien visitation that transformed Harmont and five other global locations into mysterious, dangerous Zones filled with incomprehensible artifacts. Redrick Schuhart, a young lab assistant and part-time stalker, accompanies his boss Kirill into the Zone to retrieve a rare artifact, an excursion that leads to Kirill's death and Redrick's return to full-time criminal stalking. As years pass, Redrick builds a family with Guta, but their daughter the Monkey inherits the mutations common to children of Zone workers, leaving her with black eyes and yellow fur. A complicated smuggling operation lands Redrick in prison for three years, during which time the Monkey deteriorates from a happy child to a creature that is no longer recognizably human. Driven by desperation to restore his daughter's humanity, Redrick makes one final journey into the Zone with a man he secretly plans to sacrifice, hoping to reach the legendary Golden Sphere. At the Sphere, Redrick finds himself unable to voice a selfish wish and instead repeats his companion's altruistic cry for universal happiness.

The headline events that define Redrick's journey from lab assistant to desperate father.

A Harmont radio correspondent interviews Dr. Valentine Pillman, the Nobel Prize recipient in Physics, about the alien visitation.

Redrick, Kirill, and a young man named Tender prepare for the Zone excursion by putting on bulletproof decontamination suits.

Redrick throws nuts and bolts ahead of the hovercraft every few seconds to detect invisible gravitational anomalies called bug traps.

The hovercraft passes through the Plague District, where hell slime beneath abandoned homes glows through the foundations.

After learning of Kirill's death, Redrick gets drunk, attacks bartender Ernest, and activates a shrieker device to escape arriving police.

Redrick and Guta marry, and their daughter Maria, nicknamed the Monkey, is born with black pupils and yellow fur covering her body.

Richard Noonan approaches Redrick outside the Metropole Hotel and offers him a return to legitimate work at the Institute.

Redrick meets wealthy client Raspy at the Metropole Hotel and presents the Zone artifacts he and Vulture recovered, including a ring showing perpetual motion.

Redrick delivers Vulture's cut of the money to Dina, who angrily berates him for saving her father's life.

Redrick escapes Quarterblad's trap by pulling a copper ring in the tavern floor, dropping through a trapdoor into the wine cellar below.

Redrick hides a bundle of cash and a porcelain container of hell slime under a telephone booth at an abandoned gas station.

General Lemchen reveals to Richard that stalkers are now selling Zone artifacts to enemy military forces, bypassing all domestic controls.

Valentine tells Richard his theory that the alien Visit was like a roadside picnic, with the aliens never noticing humanity's presence.

Redrick's deceased father returns to the family apartment as a living corpse, and Redrick refuses to surrender him to the Institute.

Redrick asks Arthur what he plans to wish for at the Golden Sphere, and Arthur claims he will wish for his father's legs back.

This pool captures the texture of life in Harmont through its secondary characters and scenes, beginning with Valentine Pillman's Nobel Prize interview and extending through the dangerous preparations and encounters that define Redrick's world. The Zone's many hazards — bug traps, the Plague District, hell slime — are revealed through the practical rituals Redrick employs just to survive inside it. In the years following the Visit, a thriving black market of stalkers, wealthy buyers like Raspy, and corrupt officials like Quarterblad turns alien artifacts into dangerous commodities. Richard Noonan operates in the shadows of this world as both a friend to Redrick and a quiet presence monitoring Harmont's criminal underworld. The Vulture Burbridge's daughter Dina, his son Arthur, and the strange figure of Redrick's corpse father all orbit the final act of the novel as Redrick agrees to one last desperate run for the Golden Sphere.

The supporting scenes and characters that flesh out Harmont's world after the Visit.

Valentine Pillman discovers that the six Visit Zones' positions on Earth resemble bullet holes fired from a gun near the Cygnus constellation.

Redrick spots the silver cobweb in the Zone garage and warns Kirill, but the dark interior prevents Kirill from seeing and avoiding it.

Richard Noonan receives a phone call at the Borscht informing him that Kirill Panov has died of a heart attack in the shower.

Tormented by guilt over Kirill's death, Redrick quits the Institute and returns to working as a stalker on a full-time basis.

Raspy reveals to Redrick his intention to sell any retrieved hell slime on the arms market as a weapon of mass destruction.

Facing a three-year prison sentence, Redrick reverses his refusal to sell the hell slime, choosing to provide for his family during imprisonment.

Richard Noonan is revealed to be a covert government operative working to halt the illegal flow of Zone contraband through Harmont.

Valentine explains to Richard that humanity's failure to understand alien technology reveals the fundamental limits of science and intelligence itself.

Richard visits the Schuhart apartment and learns from Guta that a doctor has declared the Monkey is no longer human.

Richard arrives at Redrick's apartment just as Vulture is leaving and hears Redrick shouting that the two of them are finished.

Vulture Burbridge proposes a scheme to Redrick to airlift the Golden Sphere from the Zone using a hot-air balloon for $500,000.

Redrick secretly decides to bring Arthur Burbridge into the Zone as an unknowing human sacrifice to pass the lethal grinder.

A sudden surge of intense heat nearly scalds Redrick and Arthur to death as they make their way toward the quarry.

Redrick spots black splotches on the quarry floor and realizes each one represents a human sacrifice the Vulture previously made at the Sphere.

Facing the Golden Sphere in despair, Redrick proclaims he has never sold his soul and demands the Sphere divine his truest wish.

This pool focuses on the decisions and discoveries that redirect the story at critical moments, beginning with Valentine's scientific breakthrough identifying the pattern of the six Visit Zones. Kirill's death in Chapter 1 — foreshadowed by an unheeded cobweb warning — becomes the turning point that drives Redrick out of the Institute and back into a life of crime. Moral crises accumulate as Redrick refuses, then reluctantly agrees, to sell lethal hell slime to an arms dealer, revealing the impossible trade-offs he faces between his conscience and his family's survival. Chapter 3 peels back the curtain on Richard Noonan's double life and the Zone's broader geopolitical consequences, while Valentine's philosophical speeches expose the fundamental limits of science to explain the incomprehensible. The final events chart Redrick's darkest decisions — secretly plotting to sacrifice an innocent man and surviving the Zone's deadliest gauntlets — before arriving at the Sphere's edge, where Redrick makes a startling proclamation about his own humanity.

The key discoveries, moral crises, and decisions that redirect Redrick's fate at every turn.