A man reflects on the past week while an unexpected storm rages outside, and he compares the events that follow with the fall of the Roman Empire.

In a dystopic future on Earth, as a woman comes home from vacation, she hears about a continent emerging from the sea as old ones sink, and returns to find her husband released from Rehabilitation Camp. He and his fellow researchers discover how to make a “sun tap” to channel the sun’s energy into power, but then he is again forced away by the government, into a hospital.

A maid, silently and in thought alone, contemplates her own position in a house full of opulent, decadent lives.

A mother, her two children, and their stepfather come over to a friend’s for a dinner on Labor Day.

The ex-wife of a famous male writer considers a story he wrote about a neighbor they once had.

A woman, living with her husband, is overcome with a strange, inexplicable ailment to her body.

A daughter, on the verge of becoming a mother, learns a great deal in spending time with her own mother.