In the 2040s to 2050s, Pico and his wife Lisa have developed a technology which allows users to upload the consciousness of dying loved ones to carefully curated virtual “habitats,” where they can live out their days in happiness. Pico’s mother Alina, a Black artist who came to the United States as a child refugee from Cuba through Operation Peter Pan in 1962, is over 100 years old and has developed dementia. As his mother nears death, Pico makes the final preparations on the virtual habitat for his mother; but after witnessing the uploading process for his late father, Pico has second thoughts on uploading his mother. In Pico’s father’s habitat, Pico’s father lives out his life with a young false version of Pico’s mother. In reality, Pico’s mother has pale soles, which her husband routinely singled out during their marriage; in Pico’s father’s habitat, she has black soles. After his mother has a heart attack, Pico’s time to decide whether or not to upload his mother draws increasingly to a close. With Alina on her deathbed, Pico realizes that regardless of his decision, this will be the last goodbye he says to his dementia-suffering mother.