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.

A young man working in an intense laboratory falls madly in love with a machine that can invent new sensations on this skin - until the experiment is destroyed.

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.

A scientist notes the discovery of a new chemical compound with physics-defying capabilities.

A mathematician tries to convince his machinist friend to travel through time with him, leading to a heated discussion of man’s hubris and the possible paradoxes that could open up if they disturb the time-space continuum.

A collection of excerpts regarding humanity's various pursuits of science throughout time.

In seventeenth-century Delft, a fanatically curious fabric merchant invents the microscope. Even as he neglects and abuses his family, he discovers a new world of life.

While waiting for an unrequited love to return, an elderly woman ruminates on her role in discovering an elegant alien technology. She feels death approaching and regrets not seeing her love again before she passes—only for him to arrive in the nick of time.

When a scientist discovers science-based information that negates his world's established creation myth and belief system, he sends the world into chaos, with some zealots clinging desperately to their dogma, while others attempt to embrace the unknown future.

In the near future, an energy crisis compels humanity to take advantage of the one source left untouched by industrialization: the past.