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.

In the future, two human men and their robotic companion are stationed at an old mining base on Mercury. When the robot goes missing on a mission, it's up to the men to find and rescue their companion—at risk to their own lives.

An elderly Chinese engineer reflects the time he spends working on obsolete space craft in relative isolation.

Facing liquidation due to public mistrust of robotic life-forms, a historic robotics company introduces a new eco-friendly form of robot in hopes of improving robot-human coexistence only to accidentally pave the way for robot domination of life on Earth.

A scientist travels to a space station orbiting Jupiter to try and figure out why the technology linking a human to a rudimentary, genetically-engineered form on the planet's surface. Over the course of his stay, he tries to figure out the nature of the relationship between the minds of the Jovian being and the human.