In this metafiction, the many lives of an unnamed man are scrutinized as he passes through millennia.

A successful gentleman whose ventures have recently failed goes on a miserable quest to find a seam of ore, following a questionable character who claims to have found it.

A man who has given everything to his friend's farm equipment business fends off onslaughts personal, emotional, and professional even as the real threat eludes him completely.

In an increasingly inappropriate recorded message to a customer, a department store clerk compares their product complaint to kangaroos he saw at the local zoo.

A man is walking home from his office one afternoon, when he passes a man lying unconscious in the street. As the man goes home and tries to navigate the complications of family life, he considers his own mortality and wonders if he has failed the people he loves.

An ordinary man gets an inch and a half of mention in the newspaper after stumbling into a low stakes rescue — and the small bit of fame sends him spiraling down a dark, egotistical path.

In intense discussion a group leader ponders aloud, asking why hermits hide and what defines outcasts, among other cerebral queries. A group of friends discusses the oddities they have seen and perceived in their lives leather-clad hermits and criminal astronauts among them. They debate the purpose of hermitage, the classification of outcasts, and the purpose of their own reflections.

A man is subpoenaed by Bureau of Compliance for not paying tax on the weekly allowance he gives a cyborg companion he built from human and machine parts. Unable to pay the outrageous tax and fee, he is forced to dissemble his ever-agreeable companion.

Later in life, a man recalls a man in a pinstripe suit from his synagogue whom he, as a boy, seemed to have seen everywhere.

A man contemplates suicide after losing his high-paying job that supported his lavish lifestyle and he finds an unlikely therapist in a slow-witted townsperson.