Following a messy breakup, an MIT graduate and a PhD student at Indiana University separately talk about the problems in their former relationship in two spliced-together conversations, exploring conflicts surrounding language, intimacy, commitment, and intellectualism.

Everything all at once in word form.

A writing critic reviews the construction of Charles Chesnutt’s stories and how to write surfiction.

In Michigan, a recently divorced professor reflects on what it means to exist, first alone in his empty apartment and then alongside his student in a mission to find a missing girl.

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 woman at the end of her life, confronted with the Monkey King of myth, looks back at the magical and mystical moments that have defined her existence.

When a star player on his professional basketball team falls during the big game, a fellow player reflects on the history of Black people in the United States that brought them to that moment.

After being recruited for a so-called neurological study, man meditates on the imaginary city he sees in his dreams.

A simulacron, who serves as a representative of an alien species, speaks with the US Secretary of Science about their wish to purchase the planet Jupiter. While the Secretary worries about stirring up conflict between the simulacron and another species, the simulacron assures him that no harm will come to Earth, and the two eventually reach an agreement.

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.