The story opens with Diana staring at her son Stefan's bare nervous system, brain, and spine in a medical center after he suffered an accident. Flashing back to a year prior, Diana and her husband Karlo are arguing over whether they should allow Stefan to undergo surgery to swap out the body he was born with for a different one simply to go adventuring. Diana is adamantly against it, for she has never been comfortable with this new technology—never felt at home in any of her new bodies after her natural one failed with ovarian cancer. Diana and Karlo's relationship is clearly strained.

Back in the present, the two watch footage of the accident, in which Stefan and his friends, all swimming in the deep sea in the bodies of rays, are playing until Stefan crashes. Diana is enraged, by the accident and her fear of the detachment she feels due to this technology—how can she even recognize her son in the body of a sea creature? She and Karlo argue again, as Karlo is far more accepting of the way things are, saying that this is just how progress and generational change works.

Later, Diana reflects on her struggle with being placed in a new body, with the intense disgust and detachment she felt for her physicality and her alien new body. Glancing around, she wonders about humanity as the physical becomes less and less real—with no way to even tell people's ages anymore as old people (or old brains) can easily be within young bodies.

They are able to make contact with Stefan, and Diana exchanges messages with him. After, she steps outside to think and process. She struggles with her concept of reality, wondering what experiences are truly real if it's all just neurons firing to create perspective. When Karlo appears, they discuss what it means to be human in this rapidly changing world. Diana wonders if she will ever be comfortable with any of this.