In the future, all humans must wait in an impossibly long line, where getting to the front means securing one’s future and never having to worry about money again. Waiting in the line for decades on end, the worst of humanity comes out.

A man who is chronically late in a society where lateness is fatal takes up an alter ego that seeks to convince people that you shouldn't be a slave to your schedule.

Two men have been locked underground somewhere in Utah, Montana, or Idaho with instructions to wait for a monitor's signal then each turn a key in a lock simultaneously to fire a "bird" at an unknown target city. They also have guns and instructions to shoot the other if the other behaves strangely.

In an unlikely encounter, a homeless teenage boy recounts harsh events of his life to a writer. He nonchalantly tells of an employer whose assignments caused him to have permanent physical and mental damage.

An ordinary man gets an inch and a half of mention in the newspaper after stumbling into a low stakes rescue — and the small bit of fame sends him spiraling down a dark, egotistical path.

When an accountant's flight is delayed due to intense fog, he and the other waiting passengers experience a series of strange occurrences, from meteors to a Cuban uprising.

A man in his thirties recounts two separate memories: being stranded in the middle of a blocked highway, and waiting for his partner inside an abortion clinic. Years after these events have occurred, he contemplates the similarities between them.

Three US time travelers in a Cold War alternative history get stuck in a time loop and decide to kill themselves to escape it. Unbeknownst to two of them, the attempt to cause their own demise will doom them to the time loop forever.

A schoolmarm attempts to teach a group of men about justice, time, and irony in a repurposed saloon after they vote to have her hung for her disciplinarian ways.

When a bus is taken hostage, a woman comes to terms with her death.