A professor tries to convey to his students the magnitude of the most perfectly crafted poem ever written in the English language: “Lycidas.”

An elderly wizard senses an impending earthquake and asks a former student to help him stop the damage. He also calls upon the transformative magic once taught to him by a cherished female mentor in order to stabilize the ground, becoming irreversibly one with the earth in the process.

A schoolmarm attempts to teach a group of men about justice, time, and irony in a repurposed saloon after they vote to have her hung for her disciplinarian ways.

A few men gather in a small house to discuss what makes humanity unique as compared to the rest of nature.

A teacher reminisces about all his wonderful students of the Narrative Studies courses he has taught around the world before his career comes to an end.

A man thinks about his relationship with his parents (especially his mother) as he watches them grow old. He then realizes that he is now old too.

In a world where immortality has become the norm for humans, two men attempt to introduce an old-fashioned tribe to eternal life.

An old man becomes aware of the finality of his life, and that he couldn't find much meaning to it anymore.

In discussing the altercations witnessed over the course of the day, Stephen Elwin and his family grapple with question of whether the downtrodden and those burdened by prejudice are nonetheless responsible for their own breeding and behavior. Elwin’s earnest and idealistic daughter Margaret valiantly defends their maid, who happens to be Black and also named Margaret, until she witnesses 'the other Margaret' breaking a piece of artwork.

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