In the far future on a cold and snowy planet, an aging woman seeks a successor to her role as Kunchen: a bearer of memory for her people across generations, a role in which one must live a long and lonely life punctuated by decade-long cryosleeps.

Eventually it came to pass that no one ever had to die, unless they ran out of money. Then, unless they were so horrible that society had to dispose of them. Then, unless wanted to or could be talked into it. Then, no one would die so long as they had just one person who loved them.

A war correspondent recounts meeting Corporal Cuckoo, who has been alive for over four centuries and holds what he believes is the secret recipe to eternal life.

A middle-aged woman looks forward to growing old because she believes older people are less beholden to other's expectations, but her friend disagrees.

After getting caught up in a barfight, a robot discusses his faulty plans for immortality with an engineering-savvy old man and his imaginative granddaughter.

A woman on a generation ship is offered the chance of immortality, and ultimately lives long enough to become part of subsequent 'waves' of human evolution - from man, to immortal, to machine, to pure energy - over countless millennia.

A humanoid immortal figure lives through the years following the death of her friend. As she watches the last of her friend's lineage die after 600 years, she reflects on the nature of her relationship with the friend.

An elderly female-identifying character remembers the past through dreams and memories, growing frustrated with the limitations of age and the fact that the revolution she has spent a lifetime working towards is starting elsewhere. As she comes back from a walk in the city, someone invites her to speak at tomorrow’s march, but she replies she will not be there.

A young girl enters a social worker's office, only to reveal that she is 2400+ years old and that she would like to be the social worker's new foster child.

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