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.

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.

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

A daughter, on the verge of becoming a mother, learns a great deal in spending time with her own mother.

Years after facing abuse from the hermit overseeing a nature preserve, two children—now adults—enact their revenge.

At the root of her complicated family formed by her father and stepmother, a girl faces years of abuse through what they consider to be a “royal beating.”

A woman, living with her husband, is overcome with a strange, inexplicable ailment to her body.

A mother, her two children, and their stepfather come over to a friend’s for a dinner on Labor Day.