In a spaceship drifting through space, Monte is doing his best to raise baby Willow alone.
He is the only member left of the crew, so he is in charge of taking care of everything,
from Willow to the garden, and even ship repairs.
This proves to be very difficult sometimes because Willow does not like being alone,
even if Monte talks to her through a microphone.
Hearing her cry makes him nervous and sometimes it causes Monte to make mistakes, like dropping
his tool in the middle of the fix.
Monte tries his best to give Willow a good life considering the circumstances.
He plays with her, shows her movies so she can learn what Earth was like, sings to her,
falls asleep by her side, and showers her with affection.
However, dealing with a kid also means Monte keeps having flashbacks to his own childhood
and the day he killed his best friend because she had killed his dog.
Every evening, after Willow falls asleep, Monte sends his daily report to Earth, which
is needed in order for the computer to know he is still alive and keep the life-support
systems for twenty-four hours more.
One day, noticing he needs to start saving on electric energy, Monte decides to jettison
everything unnecessary; this, unfortunately, includes all the bodies of the crew that are
still in the cryogenic units at the morgue.
Monte at least wants them to have a little dignity, though, so he puts them all in their
astronaut suits before pushing them off the spaceship.
Afterward, he is so overwhelmed by the meaning of his act that he falls to his knees to cry
his heart out.
Sometimes, while Willow is asleep, Monte confesses how hard this is for him, and how easy it
would be for him to lose it and kill them both.
He tries to keep his sanity by riding the medicine cabinet, but other things make it
worse, like the images of Earth that he puts up for Willow that just remind him of what
they can not have.
Monte thinks these images were probably uploaded into the system to give the crew the illusion
that return was possible.
Taking Willow around the ship for games also means that Monte keeps remembering all the
important moments he had with the crew in the different rooms and hallways, reflecting
on how it all even started.
A group of death row inmates is chosen to be sent on a mission in space to extract alternative
energy from a black hole, but they are not told that they will never come back.
Earth can not even get their reports properly anymore because they take years to arrive.
Among these inmates Monte himself and Boyse, a neurodivergent girl that Monte has to keep
from hurting herself.
After three years on the ship, Boyse is angry because the crew has finally realized they
are never coming back, and Dibs knew it yet kept it from them.
Dibs is the ship's doctor, and she is the head of the experiment which allows her to
use the others as guinea pigs.
Dibs' goal is to create a child in space through artificial insemination, but so far it has
not worked.
Boyse tries to make Dibs understand that nothing grows inside them, but Dibs does not listen,
especially when inmate Elektra manages to get pregnant, although she is going through
constant pain.
Pilot Nansen expresses her worries too because even if a baby does manage to be born, they
will just die from radiation, but Dibs is nothing but persistent and keeps on collecting
the male inmates' seed.
Intimacy among the inmates is forbidden, but the ship is equipped with "the box", a room
with a machine that helps the crew have fun on their own.
Dibs likes using the box as well, but Monte, after a few uses of his own, chooses to stay
celibate.
He rejects all of Dibs' advances and complains about the sedative she keeps giving everyone
before bedtime, but at least Dibs' fondness for him allows him to keep his fluids to himself.
Monte's only real friend among the crew is Tcherny, and together they like working in
the ship's garden while discussing various philosophical topics.
It helps Monte stay sane, unlike their captain Chandra, who is slowly being taken over by
stress.
Dibs discovers he has bad genes, and soon that turns out to translate into leukemia
invading his body.
When the ship reaches the halfway point, which equals only four more years before reaching
its destination, the crew has to start the deceleration maneuver so the ship would approach
the closest black hole in their galaxy.
Extracting the energy of the black hole is supposed to provide humanity with almost boundless
resources, but by now, the crew knows better than still believing the speech about being
heroes that they were given when it all began.
As time passes, the lack of intimacy starts to get on some of the inmate's nerves.
Ettore keeps being a creep toward the girls and uses his hand while watching others; Chandra
keeps making passes at Dibs who plays with him before rejecting him.
Since the boys use their hands so much while they are in their beds, a stink has begun
to infest the room, and Tcherny decides to start sleeping in the garden.
Dibs keeps on inseminating the girls, but Boyse refuses to be her experiment.
So whenever it is her turn, after Dibs is done with her, Mink keeps an eye on the door
while Boyse uses a douche to avoid getting pregnant.
Eventually, Elektra gives birth, but just as Nansen had predicted, the baby soon dies
of radiation, leaving Dibs crying in despair.
Unfortunately, Elektra dies as well.
When Dibs takes her body to the morgue, Boyse tries to put some herbs on Elektra's body,
following her religious beliefs, but Dibs yells at her and takes it back because it
would clog the machine.
Sometime later, while exercising, Chandra has a stroke.
Dibs puts him in bed in the infirmary, but there is an issue: as the captain, only Chandra's
finger chip can activate the computer that sends the reports and keeps the life-support
systems working.
Fortunately, Dibs thinks fast, and using a scalpel, she changes her chip for his in order
to do the reporting herself.
Later, Dibs tries to comfort Chandra, but it is obvious he is quite gone and barely
surviving, so Dibs decides to euthanize him.
One night, Ettore sneaks into the girls' room, and after binding Boyse and Mink to their
beds, he tries to take advantage of Boyse.
The girls wake up and begin screaming, so Ettore breaks Mink's nose before covering
Boyse's mouth with his hand and getting back to business.
The screaming they did is still enough for Nansen to come from the other room to try
to pull Ettore back, but Ettore overpowers her and throws her in the hallway.
After beating Nansen up, Ettore tries with Boyse again, but then Monte arrives and pushes
him to the floor to start hitting him.
Tcherny arrives as well and after stopping Monte from going too far, he frees the girls.
While Monte takes Boyse to the infirmary, Mink takes the chance to jump on Ettore and
kills him.
In the infirmary, Dibs examines Boyse and confirms Ettore did not get to enter.
After commenting she never wants to have kids, Boyse takes the chance to ask Dibs if it is
true that she was sent to jail because she killed her children and husband.
Dibs confirms it is indeed true, and when Boyse wonders why she did not end things for
herself as well, Dibs explains she tried and failed.
Since that disastrous night, Dibs begins doubling the dose of sedatives to make everyone sleep
deeply for hours without a chance of waking up.
The only one still awake is Nansen, because as the pilot, she can not be sedated in case
of emergency.
One evening, Dibs gets tired of all the failed attempts in her experiment and decides to
finally get the strongest genes on the ship.
She sneaks into Monte's room and gets busy with him without him even knowing; then, she
takes the seed out of her body and puts it in a syringe to inseminate Boyse while she
sleeps.
Nine months later, a beautiful baby is born, although Dibs does not tell anyone who the
father is.
The doctor dotes on the child constantly, keeping the baby with her in the lab all day
long.
This leaves Boyse going through postpartum depression, covered in milk that she can not
feed to her own kid.
When the ship finally approaches the black hole, Nansen gets ready to pilot a shuttle
around it.
Everyone gathers around the computer screens to watch her take off except for Boyse, who
is in the garden looking for a shovel.
When the shuttle finally leaves the ship, something weird immediately happens: the shuttle
dives into the black hole instead of flying around it.
The crew then realizes it is not Nansen doing the piloting, it is Boyse, who killed Nansen
with the shovel and took the pilot's place.
Boyse ends up dying inside the black hole with an exploded head due to spaghettification.
Mink is furious to see her last two friends gone and retrieves the shovel to attack Dibs,
injuring her but not managing to kill her because Monte intervenes and kills Mink first.
With no pilot to keep trajectory and no more women to inseminate, Dibs finally gives up.
She takes out the chip from her finger and leaves it for Monte before telling him that
the baby is his; then she ejects herself into space.
Shortly afterward, Tcherny remembers a quote from his wife that says "I would rather sink
into the Earth after I have lost you than to sit around and grieve".
Finally understanding the hardship of grief the quote refers to, Tcherny decides to follow
the words and goes to bury himself alive in the garden.
With everyone gone, Monte dares to take the baby out of the lab and names her Willow.
Years pass, and Willow is now a teenager that can help Monte with the chores around the
ship.
Monte and she do not share a bed anymore, but they do sleep in the same room.
One night, Monte realizes Willow has sneaked back into his bed because something bothers
her: it turns out she is having her first menstrual cycle.
One day, they see something very shocking on the computer screens: another ship that
looks just like theirs.
While Monte's is number seven, this one has a nine on it, meaning Earth is still sending
these experiments into space.
Nobody answers the messages they try to send to this other vessel, so Monte decides to
connect both ships and board number nine.
What he finds there is quite disturbing: this ship had been filled with dogs, who have also
been giving birth to puppies.
Most of them are dead now, and the few that are still alive have survived by feeding on
the others.
Willow asks Monte to bring a puppy back so they can keep it as a pet, but Monte refuses
because the contamination could kill them both.
This causes Willow to mention cruelty, but Monte reminds her she does not what true cruelty
is.
Sometime later, Monte finds Willow praying.
She does not know what god she is even praying to or what she should be saying, but she saw
it on tv and wants to know what those people felt.
Willow likes making awkward comments, like saying that Monte is not a criminal to her
but a hero, and asking if she looks like her mother, to which Monte always answers no before
pointing out she is special and different.
One day, the ship finds a new black hole.
While Willow and Monte had come to terms with being drifters, Willow thinks the black hole
looks incredibly interesting and wants to try to fly through it.
Monte is skeptical at first but ends up accepting, and the two of them put on astronaut suits
before boarding the shuttle.
Father and daughter hold hands as the shuttle enters the black hole, a bright yellow light
enveloping them.