A catalog of the tools different alien species use to read and write, leading to fundamental questions about what it means to make patterns of knowledge against the noise of the universe.

There are 770 million cameras in the world and we don't know who is watching or why. An worker in boiler room, a cop, a high school student, and a woman escaping from an abusive environment all have one thing in common, they are being watched.

An elderly Chinese engineer reflects the time he spends working on obsolete space craft in relative isolation.

In an alternate Great Depressions NYC, a Jewish foreman investigates the true outputs of his factory as his eccentric German employer seeks to use an emerging idea called "industrivism," or the improvement of the human body through technology, created by a bored pulp writer, to recruit workers to fulfill his machinations. Without realizing, a pulp writer in an alternative 1920s New York City invents the idea of "industrivism" that earns her an audience with an eccentric German businessman. Meanwhile, a Jewish foreman investigate the true purpose of the factory and unearths his employer's dark past and future machinations.

Days after announcing an invention that will change the fabric of his futuristic world, an inventor goes missing and two detectives must find out where he is and what his supposedly groundbreaking invention was.

Through three tales of impossible machines with abilities to manipulate the physical world, travel through time and space, and bestow telepathy onto an entire community, candidates of an engineering exam in the far future are asked to ponder fantastical implications of technology.

In a near-future world, a civilian is caught in a strange criminal investigation when his AI device—which gives him advice about acts of kindness to perform—leads him to be a pawn in a software pirate's revenge scheme.

In a futuristic world where many people have a computer planted in their brain, a female detective is hired to prove that a woman was murdered, and not by her implant.

When a serial writer decides that he can’t take more of his monotonous life, he destroys his copywriter and leaves his domestic prison to protest the rise of the machines.

In the wake of a life-altering event, Anna has returned to work and written a standard, dry academic graf on self-driving cars—which, in 2042, have become the standard mode of transportation. Her paper's footnotes, however, reveal a tragic story.