Following a discussion with her mother, Sylvia Tilly encounters a young Xahean stowaway named Me Hani Ika Hali Ka Po. Tilly, who is accustomed to taking orders from others, decides to make decisions by herself, to help Po return home in time for her coronation.

The USS Discovery has held position in space for a thousand years, and its computer system "Zora" has become sentient. She retrieves a passing escape pod carrying a man named Craft. Zora keeps Craft aboard the ship and begins to fall in love with him, but eventually lets him take Discovery's last shuttle to return to his family on Alcor IV.

On the planet Kaminar, Saru wants to learn about life outside the pre-warp society of his village, where his people are harvested as food by the predatory Ba'ul. Saru is able to send a distress signal into space that is answered by Lieutenant Philippa Georgiou, who takes Saru to join Starfleet.

Harry Mudd is captured by a bounty hunter and taken to a Federation ship, but there the hunter finds multiple other versions of Mudd already detained. Elsewhere, the real Mudd continues to create android copies of himself so he can continue to evade the authorities.