Bernadette endures constant pain after her debilitating accident, trapped in a body she cannot bear to inhabit. When she conducts an interview with Asphodel, the server where academics and great artists upload their consciousnesses, she carefully constructs her thoughts to ensure her mind will be of value to Asphodel's knowledge base. Proving her worth, Bernadette worshipfully relinquishes her physical form and endures a final agony - the maddening consciousness upload process, which she only survives by clinging to her hatred for her father and disregarding her own pain. As Bernadette relearns her mind's newfound capabilities through Asphodel's transition program, she begins to ask the server's personnel if a virtual death is possible. When she's told only an extreme shock can kill an uploaded mind, Bernadette's plan to murder her father takes shape. Marveling at the complexities of her new virtual world and plotting the best method for breaching her father's fortress, the library his mind has built for Asphodel's users, Bernadette remains plagued by dreams. Even in her false death, she fantasizes about her dead son. Convinced death was preferable to upload, her father waited for his grandson to die rather than attempting to save him, leaving Bernadette with nothing left of her beloved child. However, her desire for revenge only came after her father renounced his beliefs and uploaded his mind to the same server he refused to upload her dying son's mind to. Disguising herself as her own grandmother, Bernadette breaches her father's library and shows him a face brimming with love right before she smashes a brick over his head. His consciousness flickers, but rather than die from shock, he transforms into the form of her child. Bernadette knows her son cannot stand before her, but she embraces him anyways, consumed by her memories of overwhelming love.