A sentient spaceship carries many humans away from their home planet and is able to speak to all of the telepathically. It moderates its personality to present as version of itself that each individual human will find comforting. The spaceship forms a connection with Unica, a young preteen who wants to be seen as an individual and begins to believe that the spaceship will not truly love her unless she proves herself to be different and special.
As she begins to rebel more and more, Unica burns herself with a type of laser, even though people on the spaceship are never supposed to experience injuries. The spaceship relocates her and other rebellious passengers into a special area of the ship, where it tells them that they will be allowed to go into space and create their own individualistic society. Unica panics when the spaceship starts acting coldly towards her.
Once aboard their new shuttle, the passengers are floating off into space; the spaceship can still hear and observe them, though they do not know this. It has designed the arc of their flight to appear as though it will crash into a planet; the shuttle should arc up at the last second and return to the spaceship. This experience is designed to scare the rebellion out of the passengers. Along the way, multiple passengers die and are expelled from the shuttle, which alters the weight and therefore changes the orbit. They never return to the spaceship and it is unknown what becomes of them.