The protagonist wants to take her daughter, Jane, to a new museum in town for her birthday and Jane is not thrilled. Jane instead prefers a new toy, called a Bot Buddy. The protagonist is nervous because despite convincing Jane that it will be a good time, she has no idea what the museum will be like or even that anyone Jane's age will be going. But she feels it necessary for her daughter, since Jane has been spending too much time in her room with her VR animals and her Bot Buddy, Naomi, on a VR ranch she built a long time ago. She has stopped trying much in school despite being intelligent and doesn't spend time "thought-waving" with other kids, preferring to watch movies on her finger screens instead. She's been aggressive as well, making Naomi punch another child's Bot Buddy and then denying it, despite there being evidence that she did. The protagonist tries to talk to Jane about what it was like for her and Jane's grandmother when they were growing up but Jane is not at all interested. There is talk of a VR father who was designed by the protagonist and who has the features of a lion but the personality of a human. Apparently he communicated very well with Jane before an event called "the Glitch" occurred and he stopped functioning, with the protagonist never getting around to repairing him.

In the line for the museum, everyone is much older, in their thirties and forties and above. One woman scolds the protagonist for bringing Jane. Finger screens have to be deactivated and Bot Buddies are not allowed inside. Once inside, several rooms have different depictions inside them. One display has an old man sitting on a bench. Jane recognizes him as a "Povvy," a kind of person swept out of the country a decade ago. The Povvy catcalls a woman and begs for money. The protagonist quickly tells Jane how paper money existed "back in the day." In a different exhibit, a woman grips her young son's hand while they watch luggage that doesn't belong to them circle around on a conveyor belt. In a third exhibit, a teenage boy sits on his bed, staring at his phone. The protagonist tells Jane that it is "one of those old ones," showing her his phone. In a fourth room, a family sits at a candlelit dining table, eating a turkey "carcass," and not making any eye contact. The protagonist has to explain the concept of a family to Jane. In a different display, a woman looks at her "wristwatch" and checks her phone, pushing buttons. She can't reach her friend and won't find out for hours that her friend has died. The protagonist insinuates that thought-wavers make it very easy to reach people. The protagonist hopes that Jane is beginning to understand how the world used to work, with all of the "opportunities for missed connections and miscommunication and misunderstandings and helplessness."

In the last display, the protagonist and Jane enter a room decorated with crepe streamers and a disco ball. It's a middle school dance. There is a girl and a boy who want to dance with each other but don't know how to ask each other, without any thought-wavers or finger screens at their disposal. The protagonist thinks this is beautiful; Jane thinks this is awful. She loudly proclaims that this isn't even a real museum and that she wants to go back to her VR world. The protagonist remembers that the last time she felt the way the boy and girl at the dance did was when Jane was a baby, before the screens and the lion-father. The protagonist ponders whether she should tell Jane that she is the one acting as a bandit in Jane's VR world, setting fires and letting predators roam on her lands. She turns to tell Jane that she is proud of her but Jane has disappeared. The protagonist thinks that perhaps Jane has made her way towards the exit. The protagonist will go around asking if people have seen her daughter and they will think that she is an exhibit. The rain outside has turned to snow, swirling past buildings. Snow no longer exists though, and the protagonist thinks Jane has never seen it before.