When aliens land on a planet new to them, they find a population obsessed with a virtual reality and uninterested in the intense beauty of the natural world around them.

A mother and her three boys are on a small Greek island, where they prepare to reunite with her husband. Before they leave, they attend a party, and spend time reflecting on the possibility that they may never see their missing loved one again.

A rambunctious teenager with an inquisitive mind causes much grief for all his New England family and neighbors when he visits them in the summer of 1914, on the eve of World War I.

A progressive and bitter father going through a mid-life crisis goes on holiday to a water park with his wife and excitable son. He casually confronts racist and irritable guests while trying to figure out how to be a good dad.

Through a confronting use of second-person, four haunted houses are hypothesized, each worse than the last, and ending with the most terrifying picture of all: dark reality in suburbia.

A teenage girl is swept into the wealthy side of her coastal town by her new boyfriend, but soon finds that she longs for adventure and freedom outside of his superficial social scene.

A woman who lives happily in hotel rooms is shaken when her husband suddenly decides he wants a new life.

Prison inmates are told that they're being sent to scope out a new Earth for mankind to move to, but when they "come back" they find out they have just been play-testing a new virtual reality video game. Prison inmates are used to test a new video game which would have them inhabit a virtually real new planet, but they believe they are truly being sent to another solar system. When they realize that they've just been playing a game, there are long-term psychological impacts.

A Black, southern house servant with internalized racism, joins her mistress on a visit to another region, where she observes Black people acting with something she abhors: autonomy.

A German hotel owner in Hawaii experiences a jolt of excitement in his life when a young woman who loves literature and detests flights as much as he does checks in his hotel with her husband.