Two Black pilots, Msizi and Tariro, fly a spaceship through a wormhole and reflect on a myth related to death. They are searching for a planet that will be the new home for another African diaspora. The planet is called Malcolm X-b. They are expecting a communication from an artificially intelligent ship, but the message has not come in yet. The pair's ship is attacked and they are thrown violently. They realize that the gate opening in the wormhole has shattered because of the force of whatever flew through space and hit them. Disconnected from civilization, the only option is to fly to Malcolm X-b and try to survive there. Tariro is able to breathe without a mask on the planet because she has some cyborg implementations. Msizi's arm begins to swell because of the planet's atmosphere and he goes into anaphylactic shock. Tariro tries to nurse him back to health but he goes unconscious. He wakes to find a strange girl pulling him on a cart. After going unconscious again, he wakes up in a hospital with Tariro at his side; as it turns out, the planet is inhabited by an entire civilization. The nurse, Aluel, explains to the pair that there is a modern African village on this planet. The settlers flew here a hundred years ago when wormhole technology was in its infancy, so no one knew that the settlers survived. She tells them that an intelligent species called the Elders lived on the planet before them and helped them survive. Biologically integrating with the Elders is the only way to survive on the planet because the plant spores are hostile to human life and caused Msizi's allergic reaction. Once they are alone, Tariro tries to talk to Msizi about something, which he resists; he undergoes another allergic reaction. Misizi learns that the Elders cannot integrate with him unless he removes his neural implant from his brain. He refuses. In truth, Tariro is not really there: she died ages ago in a spaceship explosion and this is a simulated image of her created by Msizi's neural implant. If he removes it, his best friend will disappear forever. She convinces him to undergo the treatment and he grieves her absence once it is over. Misizi meets with local elders who explain that most people want him dead. The council was the one to attack the wormhole and break it so that more people could not find the planet. They ask that Msizi and Aluel travel back to more advanced planets so that Aluel can report back. The council wishes to slowly create connections with other societies. In the spaceship, a hologram of Tariro appears; it has been created by the Elders. The buried neural implant gave them the ability to communicate in human language for the first time ever.