The Antidote, narrating, watches alongside the Grangers as Asphodel and the basketball girls ceremoniously unveil Cleo Allfrey's hidden photographs at the Grange Hall. Initially too afraid to look, the Antidote kneels to pet Gladys Iscoe's returned tabby cat before being coaxed by the girl to view the prints.

Contrary to her expectation of seeing horrors—lynchings, mass graves, atrocities—the Antidote is stunned by the beauty and joy in Allfrey's quantum photographs. The images depict Pawnee women watering horses on the Loup River, children playing, sisters cultivating crops, a potluck table captioned Plenty, and abundant, multiracial, well-nourished communities. The unexpected kindness and happiness accuse her as forcefully as suffering would have.

Behind her, Cleo deflects skeptical questions about whether the photographs depict past or future, replying that she suspects humanity has more choices than it knows. A skeptic accuses her of New Deal propaganda and Spiritist fraud, but Cleo invites viewers to draw their own conclusions, suggesting the camera reveals possibilities for the land.

The Antidote is moved by images of a Black family celebrating a child's first birthday (captioned Audacious), and a vertical, plant-built living city rising from the Sandhills (captioned LIFEWARD). Grangers respond with weeping, nervous laughter, ridicule, and awe. The Dudley family argues over whether a buffalo migration print shows their land before their birth or after their death.

Studying side-by-side prints of a pioneer dugout and a Pawnee mud lodge, the Antidote realizes the sod house—icon of pioneer ingenuity—was a copy of Indigenous architecture. Surfacing from this revelation, she looks up to find Sheriff Victor Iscoe standing in the corner, ignoring the photographs and staring directly at her, his face blank and threatening.