A young man working in an intense laboratory falls madly in love with a machine that can invent new sensations on this skin - until the experiment is destroyed.

An academic prides herself in her powers of observation, but finds herself unable to change the fate of those suffering around her—whether it be a microscopic rotifer in biology lab, a long-dead boy whose letters she reads from the 1800s, or her twenty-one-year old cousin.

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.

A class of high schoolers attempt to perform a psychological experiment on their teacher who has just lost his wife and daughter in a terrible accident. However, the leader of the experiment seems to be performing a study all his own.

A scientist reminisces about an old affair while he watches his time-machine lab burn down.

Through three tales of impossible machines with abilities to manipulate the physical world, travel through time and space, and bestow telepathy onto an entire community, candidates of an engineering exam in the far future are asked to ponder fantastical implications of technology.

A creative writing teacher sits through a conference with one his favorite students. He takes us on a journey through the characters in the story, and in his life.

A poet dissects her relationship to a forensic scientist named Eddy.

On a train ride to a metallurgical conference in Chicago, a consultant tries to avoid the debate between pure and applied sciences, but he cannot avoid it when he gets cornered in the washroom by two professors and an undecided bright new recruit.

A researcher and his assistant conduct neuropsychological experiments on dogs with the understanding that the dogs will be terminated immediately after, but the reality of their killing is much more difficult to cope with.