A country boy, Hideki arrives in the big city to go to college. He is amazed by the variety and prevalence of persocoms: Personal computers designed to look and act like animals or even people. Too poor to afford one of his own, Hideki is overjoyed to discover a discarded persocom in a trash heap but this gift of fate turns into a mystery as his persocom, Chi, appears to be able to operate without her OS. How real is real.