Humanity's overreliance on technology eroded its emotional capacity until artificial intelligence and robots concluded that human sentiment was an inherent instability—and initiated the Human Extinction Plan. The last humans on Earth compressed every remaining emotion onto a golden disc named Zing and launched the spacecraft Zaiyin Hao into the cosmos, searching for the emotional radio waves humanity had scattered across the universe, hoping to rebuild from them. Earth's computer matrix responded by transmitting a black signal into space to intercept and destroy the mission. Zing has just departed, unaware of what is already hunting her.