Leaving a mechanized and overcrowded New York City for the vastness of space, a group of scientists arrives at a research station that has been receiving messages from aliens calling themselves the Beloved Leaders. Without warning, the scientists are kidnapped, confined to a sterile cell under close observation, and cloned. Their survival, and that of all intelligent life, now hangs on one question. Are these replicas capable of reason, or will they automatically follow the Beloved Leaders?