When aliens land on a planet new to them, they find a population obsessed with a virtual reality and uninterested in the intense beauty of the natural world around them.

In a futuristic world, a man awoken from being cryogenically frozen meets a ditzy tour guide to the Future, whose job is to help him learn about the new world through a series of virtual reality simulations. However, the world's AI leader may be manipulating them both for his own gain.

As a programmer builds a videogame world, the stars above Earth go out and reality begins to disappear one landscape at a time until nothing is left but a memory of a woman, Sarah.

In an unknown town in the far future, a hacker blackmails a civilian by hijacking his virtual immersion software, putting the civilian in doubt of what's real and what's fake.

As a teenage girl stumbles upon a mysterious portal leading her to a utopian, magical world, her storyline converges with that of the author—a middle-aged, married mother of two who has come out as asexual to her husband—leading both to a reckoning with their unfulfilling romantic relationships and deepest desires.

Prison inmates are told that they're being sent to scope out a new Earth for mankind to move to, but when they "come back" they find out they have just been play-testing a new virtual reality video game. Prison inmates are used to test a new video game which would have them inhabit a virtually real new planet, but they believe they are truly being sent to another solar system. When they realize that they've just been playing a game, there are long-term psychological impacts.

All over a large city, people are disappearing down rabbit holes into fantasy worlds which are tailor-made just for them. As a young woman watches the streets of her city empty, she begins to worry that her own custom-made rabbit hole may never appear—and she could be stuck in the human world forever.

A virus and bacteria-ridden world forces humanity into virtual reality where human touch is but a simulation. When a scientist researching potential reentry encounters the pleasure of real human touch for the first time since her birth, she grapples with the limitations of the seemingly perfect yet largely empty life she has been given.

When a young girl finds that she can no longer visit the magical world she loved as a child, she tries to find her way back to that world while struggling with the challenges of growing up.

In a distant future in which technological advances have extended human lifespans, a man must decide whether or not to upload his dying Cuban refugee mother’s consciousness to a digital “habitat” technology he has developed, where she can live out her life in virtual simulation back home in Cuba.