One night while visiting his mother, a man contends with the nature of faith and family.

A man tells his life story leading up to his suicide, attempting to explain the seemingly-inescapable mental paradoxes he found himself facing in his quest to be an authentic person, which reinforced, time after time, his belief that he was a fraud.

A writer gives an account of his friend Dr. Tokai, a kind and sophisticated plastic surgeon who died after his first real heartbreak.

A research psychologist visits a peculiar asylum patient who recounts his life story. The patient warns the researcher about how obsession with the pursuit of knowledge can make one lose sight of their humanity until it is unsalvageable.

In an alternative past where each human can access the minds of all other people at all times, a car crash causes one man to lose connection, and he becomes infatuated with the feeling of having a singular mind.

A graduate student, on a trip in the Sonoran Desert, contemplates quitting her PhD program and moving on with life.

In a future where technology has advanced to the point where humans can undergo "optimization" to rid themselves of emotions and increase their mental functions, one man decides to cling to his humanity in an effort to atone for his sins and appreciate the beauty of being human.

An accomplished but ineffectual columnist searches for fulfillment, until a death in the family causes him to question the family he took for granted.

When a scientist discovers science-based information that negates his world's established creation myth and belief system, he sends the world into chaos, with some zealots clinging desperately to their dogma, while others attempt to embrace the unknown future.

A young man has been experiencing intense hallucinations for most of his life. When one of his nightmares begins to seem a little too real, he realizes there may be an explanation for these experiences, and it may have something to do with his mother's death.