In Michigan, a recently divorced professor reflects on what it means to exist, first alone in his empty apartment and then alongside his student in a mission to find a missing girl.

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.

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

A writing critic reviews the construction of Charles Chesnutt’s stories and how to write surfiction.

In intense discussion a group leader ponders aloud, asking why hermits hide and what defines outcasts, among other cerebral queries. A group of friends discusses the oddities they have seen and perceived in their lives leather-clad hermits and criminal astronauts among them. They debate the purpose of hermitage, the classification of outcasts, and the purpose of their own reflections.

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

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.

Is it better to have a human civilization devoid of art and culture than to have none at all? Three Earth ambassadors must whether to annihilate a space colony that has traded away human consciousness for a hive mind that feels nothing but the need for survival. In the distant future, three humans in possession of nuclear warheads must decide whether to allow a remarkable human variant species without consciousness to dominate the galaxy or destroy them forever.

A man's lonely life focused on the pursuit of reason and music leaves him questioning what more there may be in the lives of other people and of religion.

A catalog of the tools different alien species use to read and write, leading to fundamental questions about what it means to make patterns of knowledge against the noise of the universe.