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.

Entranced by the allure of real magic, a market boy is appointed court magician for a cruel regent. Only when he begins to lose the things he loves does he realize he was not ready to pay the cost.

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.

Haunted by the ghosts of those he killed in the Congo, King Leopold II hires an inventor to create a machine capable of cleansing him of unwanted visions.

An aspiring magician takes on a nearly impossible feat to impress a club of older magicians.

In the far future, an invention called "the prism" uses quantum mechanics to cause divergences in future timelines and create a means of communication across these alternate realities. Two different women explore the choices they have made in their own lives and the regrets they harbor--and have to figure out how to ultimately make peace with their decisions.

When a young couple in a park joins hands and miraculously teleports back home, the man’s subsequent obsession with recreating that one-off spark of magic drives a wedge in between them.

A collection of excerpts regarding humanity's various pursuits of science throughout time.