EXHALATION

IT HAS LONG BEEN SAID THAT AIR (WHICH OTHERS CALL

argon) is the source of life. This is not in fact the case, and I
engrave these words to describe how I came to understand the
true source of life and, as a corollary, the means by which life
will one day end.
For most of history, the proposition that we draw life from
air was so obvious that there was no need to assert it. Every day
we consume two lungs heavy with air; every day we remove the
empty ones from our chest and replace them with full ones. Ifa
person is careless and lets his air level run too low, he feels the
heaviness of his limbs and the growing need for replenishment.
It is exceedingly rare that a person is unable to get at least one
replacement lung before his installed pair runs empty; on those
unfortunate occasions where this has happened—when a per-
son is trapped and unable to move, with no one nearby to assist
him—he dies within seconds of his air running out.
But in the normal course of life, our need for air is far from
our thoughts, and indeed many would say that satisfying that
need is the least important part of going to the filling stations.
38 Ted Chiang

For the filling stations are the primary venue fo

. . T Sogj
sation, the places from which we draw emotj =
Onal gy Me
as well as physical. We all keep spare sets of full Jy Pray,
"
homes, but when one is alone, the act of opening one, : In OY
; ; . c
replacing one’s lungs can seem little better than a cho “Stang
company of others, however, it becomes a communal actjy
ve. Ing,
shared pleasure. My,
If one is exceedingly busy, or feeling unsociable, One migh
simply pick up a pair of full lungs, install them, and leave one
emptied lungs on the other side of the room. If one has iy
minutes to spare, it’s simple courtesy to connect the empty lung,
to an air dispenser and refill them for the next person. But by far
the most common practice is to linger and enjoy the companyof
others, to discuss the news of the day with friends or acquain-
tances and, in passing, offer newly filled lungs to one’s interlocu-
tor. While this perhaps does not constitute air sharing in the
strictest sense, there is camaraderie derived from the awareness
that all our air comes from the same source, for the dispensers
are but the exposed terminals of pipes extending from the res-
ervoir of air deep underground, the great lung of the world, the
source of all our nourishment.
Many lungs are returned to the same filling station the next
day, but just as many circulate to other stations when people visit
neighboring districts; the lungs are all identical in appearance,
smooth cylinders of aluminum, so one cannot tell whether 4
given lung has always stayed close to home or whether it has
traveled long distances. And just as lungs are passed betwee?
persons and districts, so are news and gossip. In this way one can
receive news from remote districts, even those at the very edge
of the world, without needing to leave home, although I myself
enjoy traveling. I have journeyed all the way to the edge of the
 Exhalation 39

world, and seen the solid chromium wall that extends from the
ground up into the infinite sky.
It was at one of the filling stations that I first heard the rumors
that prompted my investigation and led to my eventual enlight-
enment. It began innocently enough, with a remark from our
district's public crier. At noon of the first day of every year, it is
traditional for the crier to recite a passage of verse, an ode com-
posed long ago for this annual celebration, which takes exactly
one hour to deliver. The crier mentioned that on his most recent
performance, the turret clock struck the hour before he had
fnished, something that had never happened before. Another
person remarked that this was a coincidence, because he had
just returned from a nearby district where the public crier had
complained of the same incongruity.
No one gave the matter much thought beyond the simple
acknowledgment that seemed warranted. It was only some days
later, when there arrived word of a similar deviation between
the crier and the clock ofa third district, that the suggestion was
made that these discrepancies might be evidence of a defect in
the mechanism common to all the turret clocks, albeit a curious
one to cause the clocks to run faster rather than slower. Horolo-
gists investigated the turret clocks in question, but on inspec-
tion they could discern no imperfection. In fact, when compared
against the timepieces normally employed for such calibration
purposes, the turret clocks were all found to have resumed keep-
ing perfect time.
I myself found the question somewhat intriguing, but I was
too focused on my own studies to devote much thought to other
matters. I was and am a student of anatomy, and to provide con-
text for my subsequent actions, I now offer a brief account of my
relationship with the field.
 40 Ted Chiang

Death is uncommon, fortunately, because We are q

and fatal mishaps are rare, but it makes difficult the Urable
anatomy, especially since many of the accidents serious ene, of
to cause death leave the deceased’s remains too q Ugh
study. If lungs are ruptured when full, the amaged for
explosive force
tear a body asunder, ripping the titanium as easily as if it Nite
tin. In the past, anatomists focused their attention on the limbs
which were the most likely to survive intact. During
the Very first
anatomy lecture I attended a century ago, the lecturer
Showed ys
a severed arm, the casing removed to reveal
the dense column
of rods and pistons within. I can vividly recall
the way, after he
had connected its arterial hoses to a wall-mounted lung he kept
in the laboratory, he was able to manipulate the actuating rods
that protruded from the arm’s ragged base, and in response the
hand would open and close fitfully.
In the intervening years, our field has advanced to the point
where anatomists are able to repair damaged limbs and, on occa-
sion, attach a severed limb. At the same time we have become
capable of studying the physiology of the living; I have given
a version of that first lecture I saw, during which I opened the
casing of my own arm and directed my students’ attention to the
rods that contracted and extended when I wiggled my fingers.
Despite these advances, the field of anatomy still had a great
unsolved mystery at its core: the question of memory.
While
we knewa little about the structure of the brain,
its physiol-
ogy is notoriously hard to study because of the brain
’s extreme
delicacy. It is typically the case in fatal accidents
that, when the
skull is breached, the brain erupts in a clou
d of gold, leaving
little besides shredded filament and leaf
from which nothing
useful can be discerned. For decades the Prevai
ling theory of
memory was that all of a person’s experiences wer
e engraved
 Exhalation a1

on sheets of gold foil; it was

these sheets, torn apart by th
of the blast, that were the sour e force
ce of the tiny flakes found afte
r
accidents. Anatomists would collect the bits of
pend years trying
to reconstruct the original sheets, with the hope
of eventually
deciphering the symbols in which the deceased’s
recent experi-
ences were inscribed.
I did not subscribe to this theory, known as the
inscription
hypothesis, for the simple reason that if al]
our experiences are in
fact recorded, why is it that our memories are incomplet
e? Advo-
cates of the inscription hypothesis offered an explan
ation for
forgetfulness—suggesting that over time the foil sheets
become
misaligned from the stylus which reads the memories,
until the
oldest sheets shift out of contact with it altogether—but
I never
found it convincing. The appeal of the theory was easy for me
to
appreciate, though; I too had devoted many an hou
r to examin-
ing flakes of gold through a microscope and can
imagine how
gratifying it would be to turn the fine-adjustment knob and
see
legible symbols come into focus.
More than that, how wonderful would it be to decipher the
very oldest of a deceased person’s memories, ones that he him-
self had forgotten? None of us can remember much more than a
hundred years in the past, and written records—accounts that we
ourselves inscribed but have scant memory of doing so—extend
only a few hundred years before that. How many years did we
live before the beginning of written history? Where did we come
from? It is the promise of finding the answers within our own
brains that makes the inscription hypothesis so seductive.
I was a proponent of the competing school of thought, which
held that our memories were stored in some medium in which
the process of erasure was no more difficult than recording:
 42 Ted Chiang

perhaps in the rotation of gears, or the Positions of. ser

switches. This theory implied that everything we had for ie o¢
was indeed lost, and our brains contained No histor; es Older
those found in our libraries. One advantage of this theo an
that it better explained why, when
lungs are installe di "as
who have die n th
d from lack of air, the revi
.
:

ved have no Memo “ 0

and are all but mindless: somehow ti

the shock of death had fs
all the gears or switches. The inscriptionists
claimed
the Shock
had merely misaligned the foi
l sheets, but no one Was willin
to kill a living person, even an
imbecile, in order to Tesolve the
debate. I had envisioned an ex
periment which might allow
me to determine the truth conclusive
ly, but it was a tisky one,
and deserved careful consid
eration before it was undert
I remained undecided for the aken.
longest time, until I heard mo
news about the clock anomaly. re

Word arrived from a more dist

ant district that its public crier
had li kewise observed the turret cloc
k striking the hour before
he had finished his new year’s
recital. What made this notabl
was that his district’s clock employed e
a different mechanism, one
in which the hours were ma rked by the flow of mercury
bowl. Here the discrepanc into a
y could not be explained
mechanical by a common
fault. Most People susp
ected fraud, a practical
perpetrated by mischief joke
-makers, | had a differen
darker one that I dared no t Suspicion, a
t voice, but it dec ided
action; I would proceed with my course of
my experiment
The first tool I constructe
d was the simp lest: in
tory I fixed fo my labora-
ur prisms on mounting
brackets and carefully
aligned them so that
their apexes
formed the corners of
angle. When they were a rect-
arranged thus, a beam of
at one light directed
of the lower prisms was reflecte
d up, then backward, then
down, and then forward agai
n in a quadrilateral loop. Acco
rd-

neneenss ities te cnmemetetaemenees

aaaiieaimon
 Exhalation 43

ingly, when I sat with my eyes at the level of the first prism, I
obtained a clear view of the back of my own head. This solipsistic
riscope formed the basis of all that was to come.
A similarly rectangular arrangement of actuating rods al-
lowed a displacement of action to accompany the displacement
of vision afforded by the prisms. The bank of actuating rods was
much larger than the periscope but still relatively straightfor-
ward in design; by contrast, what was attached to the end of these
respective mechanisms was far more intricate. To the periscope I
added a binocular microscope mounted on an armature capable
of swiveling side to side or up and down. To the actuating rods I
added an array of precision manipulators, although that descrip-
tion hardly does justice to those pinnacles of the mechanician’s
art. Combining the ingenuity of anatomists and the inspiration
provided by the bodily structures they studied, the manipulators
enabled their operator to accomplish any task he might normally
perform with his own hands, but on a much smaller scale.
Assembling all of this equipment took months, but I could
not afford to be anything less than meticulous. Once the prepa-
rations were complete, I was able to place each of my hands on
a nest of knobs and levers and control a pair of manipulators
situated behind my head and use the periscope to see what they
worked on. I would then be able to dissect my own brain.
The very idea must sound like pure madness, I know, and
had I told any of my colleagues, they would surely have tried
to stop me. But I could not ask anyone else to risk themselves
for the sake of anatomical inquiry, and because I wished to
conduct the dissection myself, I would not be satisfied by merely
being the passive subject of such an operation. Auto-dissection
was the only option.
I brought in a dozen full lungs and connected them with a
 the bronchial inlets within my
chest. This Would sy
six days’ worth of air. To pr ply
ovide for the Possibility tha Me y:;
not have completed t } th
my experiment within that
scheduled a visit from Period, |
a colleague at the end
of that time "ad

ing and dizzying, and I sa

vored it On a strictly aesthe
several mi tic basis for
nutes before proceeding wi
th my explorations.
It was generally hypothesized
that the brain was divided in
to

8 See
med to rese
one another, while the subass mble
embly in t he center
be different, more heterogeneou appeared to
s and wi th mor
e Moving parts,
 Exhalation
45
owever, the components were pack
ed too closely for me to 5
auch of thei op
r eration; if I intended to learn anvth; go ‘
. ything mor
ou
e ld require a more intimate vantage point . =
Fach subassembly had a local reservoir of
extending from the regulator at the air, fed by a hose
base of my brain. | focused
my periscope on the rearmost subassembly and, using the
emote manipulators, I quickly disconnec
ted the outlet hose and
installed a longer one in its
place. I had Practiced this man
eu-
yer countless times so that I could Perfor
m it in a matter of
moments; even so, I was not certain
I could complete the con-
nection before the subassembly had depleted its local reservoir.
Only after I was satisfied that the component’
operation had not
peen interrupted did I continue; I rearranged the longer hose
to gain a better view of what lay in the fissure behind it: other
hoses that connected it to its neighboring components. Usin
g
the most slender pair of manipulators to reach into the
narrow
crevice, I replaced the hoses one by one with longer substitutes.
Eventually, I worked my way around the entire subassembly and
replaced every connection it had to the rest of my brain. I was
now able to unmount this subassembly from the frame that sup-
ported it and pull the whole section outside of what was once
the back of my head.
I knew it was possible I had impaired my capacity to think
and was unable to recognize it, but performing some basic arith-
metic tests suggested that I was uninjured. With one subassem-
bly hanging from a scaffold above, I now had a better view of
the cognition engine at the center of my brain, but there was not
enough room to bring the microscope attachment itself in for
a close inspection. In order for me to really examine the work-
ings of my brain, I would have to displace at least half a dozen
subassemblies.
 46
Ted Chiang

Laboriously, painstakingly, I repeated th

pre
stituting hoses for othe 9Ced:
r subassemblies, re
Positioning Sub,
one farther back, two more hig
her up, and two others a te
sides, suspending all six f
rom the scaffold above my
I was heag, %.
done, my brain looked like a
n explosion frozen. Un
tesimal fraction of a secon af
d ter the det Onatio; n, an
finj.
dizzy when I thought abou again Ife}
t it. But at | ast the COSn
itself was exposed, suppo ition engi.
rted on a pillar of hose
rods leading down into m s and ac
y torso. I

a landscape of tiny spinni

ng roto
cylinders.

I turned my microscope
to one of the memory suba
blies and be ssem-
gan examining its design. I
had no expectation that
I would be able to deciph
er my me mories, only that | migh
divine the means by whic t
h they were recorded. As
dicted, there were no ream I had pre-
s of foil pages visible, but
Prise neither did I see bank to my sur-
s of gearwheels or switches
the subassem . Instead,
bly seemed to consist almost
exclusively of a bank

EE RIN Ama
 Exhalation 47

_ tubules. Through the interstices between the tubules, I was

ofaif simpse ripples passing through the bank’
interior.
eh careful inspection and increasing magnification, I dis-
d that the tubules ramified into tiny air capillaries, which
cen terwoven with a dense latticework of wires on which gold
wer’ n yete hinged. Under the influence of air escaping from the
ries the leaves were held in a variety of positions. These
ae not switches in the conventional sense, for they did not
vetain their position without a current of air to support them,
but I hypothesized that these were the switches I had sought,
the medium in which my memories were recorded. The ripples
[ saw must have been acts of recall, as an arrangement of leaves
was read and sent back to the cognition engine.
Armed with this new understanding, I then turned my
microscope to the cognition engine. Here too I observed a lat-
ticework of wires, but they did not bear leaves suspended in
position; instead the leaves flipped back and forth almost too
rapidly to see. Indeed, almost the entire engine appeared to be
in motion, consisting more of lattice than of air capillaries, and
I wondered how air could reach all the gold leaves in a coherent
manner. For many hours I scrutinized the leaves, until I real-
ized that they themselves were playing the role of capillaries;
the leaves formed temporary conduits and valves that existed
just long enough to redirect air at other leaves in turn, and then
disappeared as a result. This was an engine undergoing continu-
us transformation, indeed modifying itself as part of its opera,
lion. The lattice was not so much a machine as it was a page on
which the machine was written, and on which the machine itself
ceaselessly wrote.
My consciousness could be said to be encoded in the position
 48
Ted Chiang

of these tiny leaves, but it would be More accy

r,
it was encoded in the ever-shifting pattern
of tins ° ht,
leaves. Watching the oscillations of these flakes ofgaa
air does not, as we had always assumed, simply Proy; ma
to the engine that realizes our thoughts. Air ig in fact
medium of our thoughts. All that we
are is a Pattern of air "ey
My memories were inscribed, not as
8TOOves on foil of oa
position of switches, but as persistent currents
ofargon,
In the moments after I grasped the nature
of this Latic
mechanism, a cascade of insights penetrated
my Consciousnes,
in rapid succession. The first and most
trivial was understang.
ing why gold, the most malleable and ductile
of metals, was the
only material out of which our brains could
be made. Only the
thinnest of foil leaves could move rapidly
enough for such a
mechanism, and only the most delicate
of filaments could act
as hinges for them. By comparison,
the copper burr raised by
my stylus as I engrave these words and
brushed from the sheet
when I finish each Page is as coarse
and heavy as scrap. This truly
was a medium where erasing and recording
could be performed
rapidly, far more so than any arrangement
of switches or gears.
What next became clear was why
installing full lungs into a
person who has died from lack
of air does not bring him back
to life. These leaves within the
lattice remain balanced between
continuous cushions of air. This
arrangement lets them flit back
and forth swiftly, but it also means that
if the flow of air ever
ceases, everything is lost;
the leaves all collapse into
pendent states, erasing the identical
patterns and the consciousness
represent. Restoring the air they
supply cannot re-create what
€vanesced. This wa has
s the Price of speed; a mo
for storing patterns would me re stable medium
an that our consciousnesse
Op
erate far more slowly. s would
 Exhalation 49

jt was then that I perceived the solution to the clock anomaly.

[ saw that the speed of these leaves’ movements depended on
their being supported by air; with sufficient air flow, the leaves
could move nearly frictionlessly. If they were moving more
slowly, it was because they were being subjected to more fric-
tion, which could occur only if the cushions of air that supported
them were thinner, and the air flowing through the lattice was
moving with less force.
It is not that the turret clocks are running faster. What is hap-
pening is that our brains are running slower. The turret clocks
are driven by pendulums, whose tempo never varies, or by the
flow of mercury through a pipe, which does not change. But our
prains rely on the passage of air, and when that air flows more
slowly, our thoughts slow down, making the clocks seem to us
to run faster.
I had feared that our brains might be growing slower, and
it was this prospect that had spurred me to pursue my auto-
dissection. But I had assumed that our cognition engines—
while powered by air—were ultimately mechanical in nature,
and some aspect of the mechanism was gradually becoming
deformed through fatigue, and thus responsible for the slowing.
That would have been dire, but there was at least the hope that
we might be able to repair the mechanism and restore our brains
to their original speed of operation.
But if our thoughts were purely patterns of air rather than
the movement of toothed gears, the problem was much more
serious, for what could cause the air flowing through every per-
son's brain to move less rapidly? It could not be a decrease in the
pressure from our filling stations’ dispensers; the air pressure in
our lungs is so high that it must be stepped down by a series of
regulators before reaching our brains. The diminution in force, I
 |,

50 Ted Chiang

saw, must arise from the opposite direction. the

’ . . Tr

surrounding atmosphere was Increasing, “Ste

form My
How could this be? As soon as the question
possible answer became apparent: our sky must no}being’
height. Somewhere above the limits of our vision, the chr “ey
My,
walls surrounding our world must curve inward to form,
our universe is a sealed chamber rather than an Open we
air is gradually accumulating within that chamber, uni itege
the pressure in the reservoir below.
This is why, at the beginning of this engraving, I said that
is not the source of life. Air can neither be created nor destroyey
the total amount of air in the universe remains constant, andi
air were all that we needed to live, we would never die. By :
truth the source of life is a difference in air pressure, the flow
air from spaces where it is thick to those where it is thin. The
activity of our brains, the motion of our bodies, the action of
every machine we have ever built, are driven by the movement
of air, the force exerted as differing pressures seek to balance
one another out. When the pressure everywhere in the universe
is the same, all air will be motionless and useless; one day we
will be surrounded by motionless air and unable to derive any
benefit from it.
We are not really consuming air at all. The amount of air that
I draw from each day’s new pair of lungs is exactly as
much as
seeps out through the joints of my limbs and the seams
of my
casing, exactly as much as lam adding to
the atmosphere around
me; all I am doing is converting air at high
pressure to air at low.
With every movement of my body, I contrib
ute to the equaliza-
tion of pressure in our universe
. With every thought that
T hasten the arrival of that I have,
fatal equilibrium,
Had I come to this realization un
der any other circumstance,

+e mnptenegges Be
 Exhalation 51

jhave leapt UP from my chair and run into the streets, but
wo rent situation—body locked ina restraining bracket,
ip B c gpended across my laboratory—doing so was impos-
prait . rd see the leaves of my brain flitting faster from the
spe of my thoughts, which in turn increased my agitation at
um $0 restrained and immobile. Panic at that moment might
ing dito my death, a nightmarish paroxysm of simultaneously
have veonee d and spiraling out of control, struggling against
peins traints until my air ran out. It was by chance as much as
ation that my hands adjusted the controls to avert my
by "opi c gaze from the latticework, so all I could see
was the
nn surface of my worktable. Thus freed from having to see
ind magnify my own apprehensions, I was able to calm down.
when I had regained sufficient composure, I began the lengthy
rocess of reassembling myself. Eventually I restored my brain
‘| its original compact configuration, reattached the plates of my
nead, and released myself from the restraining bracket.
At first the other anatomists did not believe me when I told
hem what I had discovered, but in the months that followed
my initial auto-dissection, more and more of them became con-
yinced. More examinations of people's brains were performed,
more measurements of atmospheric pressure were taken, and
the results were all found to confirm my claims. The background
air pressure of our universe was indeed increasing, and slowing
our thoughts as a result.
There was widespread panic in the days after the truth first
became widely known, as people contemplated for the first time
the idea that death was inevitable. Many called for the strict
curtailment of activities in order to minimize the thickening of
tt atmosphere; accusations of wasted air escalated into furious
brawls and, in some districts, deaths. It was the shame of having
 52 Ted Chiang

caused these deaths, together with the reming thee

be many centuries fe e our at atmosphere’;,
y' befor
yet t Wey
ies
equal to that of the reservoir underground, that bea,
panic to subside. We are not sure precisely how ableg he
it will take; additional measurements and calculations te
performed and debated. In the meantime, there is much
discy.
sion over how we should spend the time that TeMAiNS to ys
One sect dedicated itself to the goal of reversing the equa,
ization of pressure and found many adherents. The Mechanj.
cians among them constructed an engine that took air from
oy,
atmosphere and forced it into a smaller volume, a Process
they
called compression. Their engine restored air to the
pressure it
originally had in the reservoir, and these Reversalists
excitedly
announced that it would form the basis of a new
kind of filling
station, one that would—with each lung it refil
led—revitalize
not only individuals but the universe itself. Alas,
closer exami-
nation of the engine revealed its fatal flaw. The
engine itself was
powered by air from the reservoir, and for
every lungful of air
that it produced, the engine consumed not
just a lungful but
slightly more. It did not reverse the process
of equalization but,
like everything else in the world, exacerbated
it.
Although some of their adherents left in
disillusionment after
this setback, the Reversalists as a gr
oup were undeterred and
began drawing up alternate design
s in which the compressor
was powered instead by the uncoiling
of springs or the descent
of weights. These mechanisms fared no bet
ter. E Very spring that
is wound tight represents air released by
the person who did the
winding; every weight that rests
higher than ground level repre-
sents air released by the person wh
o did the lifting. There is no
source of power in the universe tha
t does not ultimately derive

x SINT" 0 rr eure" oe nerenaagreentagy veep 7 eee see nee

 Exhalation 53

a difference in air pressure, and there can be no engine

from operation will not, on balance, reduce that difference.
ne Reversalists continue their labors, confident that they
ij] one day construct an engine that generates more compres-
" than it uses, a perpetual power source that will restore to
se niverse its lost vigor. I do not share their optimism; I believe
i the process of equalization is inexorable. Eventually, all the
jirin our universe will be evenly distributed, no denser or more
varefied in one spot than in any other, unable to drive a piston,
urn a rotor, OF flip a leaf of gold foil. It will be the end of pres-
gure, the end of motive power, the end of thought. The universe
will have reached perfect equilibrium.
Some find irony in the fact that a study of our brains revealed
to us not the secrets of the past but what ultimately awaits us
in the future. However, I maintain that we have indeed learned
something important about the past. The universe began as an
enormous breath being held. Who knows why, but whatever the
reason, I am glad that it did, because I owe my existence to that
fact. All my desires and ruminations are no more and no less
than eddy currents generated by the gradual exhalation of our
universe. And until this great exhalation is finished, my thoughts
live on.
So that our thoughts may continue as long as possible, anat-
omists and mechanicians are designing replacements for our
cerebral regulators, capable of gradually increasing the air pres-
sure within our brains and keeping it just higher than the sur-
tounding atmospheric pressure. Once these are installed, our
thoughts will continue at roughly the same speed even as the air
thickens around us. But this does not mean that life will con-
tinue unchanged. Eventually the pressure differential will fall to
 Sa

SA Ted Chiang

such a level that our limbs will weaken ang ourm

grow sluggish. We may then ry to slow our thous wi
our physical torpor is less conspicuous to ys, but thay Oth
cause external processes to appear to accelerate The ml
clocks will rise to a chatter as their pendulums Wave Meking
falling objects will slam to the ground as ifPropelleg me
undulations will race down cables like the crack of gwhi,
At some point our limbs will cease moving altogether Lea,
not be certain of the precise sequence of events near the eng
but I imagine a scenario in which our thoughts will Continue t,
operate, so that we remain conscious but frozen, immobile a,
statues. Perhaps we'll be able to speak for a while longer, because
our voice boxes operate on a smaller pressure differential than
our limbs, but without the ability to visit a filling station, ou,
every utterance will reduce the amount of air left for thought
and bring us closer to the moment when our thoughts
cease
altogether. Will it be preferable to remain mute
to prolong our
ability to think, or to talk until the very end?
J don't know.
Perhaps a few of us, in the days before we
cease moving, will
be able to connect our cerebral regulators
directly to the dispens-
ers in the filling stations, in effect
replacing our lungs with the
mighty lung of the world. If So, those few
will be able to remain
conscious right up to the final moments
before all pressure is
equalized. The last bit of air Pressure
left in our universe will be
expended driving a Persons
conscious thought.
And then, our universe will be
in a state of absolute equilib-
rium. All life andthought will cease an
But I maintain a sl d, with them, time
ender hope. itself.
 Exhalation 55

another universe besides our own that is even larger in volume.

it is possible that this hypothetical universe has the same air
pressure as ours or even higher, but suppose that it had a much
lower air pressure than ours, perhaps even a true vacuum?
The chromium that separates us from this supposed universe
is too thick and too hard for us to drill through, so there is no
way we could reach it ourselves, no way to bleed off the excess
atmosphere from our universe and regain motive power that
way. But I fantasize that this neighboring universe has its own

to
inhabitants, ones with capabilities beyond our own. What if they

pI
(ok: ee
were able to create a conduit between the two universes and
install valves to release air from ours? They might use our uni-
verse as a reservoir, running dispensers with which they could
fill their own lungs, and use our air as a way to drive their own
civilization.
It cheers me to imagine that the air that once powered me
could power others, to believe that the breath that enables me

Thay
to engrave these words could one day flow through someone
else's body. I do not delude myself into thinking that this would AT
a

be a way for me to live again, because I am not that air, I am the

eT

pattern that it assumed, temporarily. The pattern that is me, the

patterns that are the entire world in which I live, would be gone.
But I have an even fainter hope: not only that those inhab-
itants use our universe as a reservoir, but that once they have
emptied it of its air, they might one day be able to open a passage
7m

and actually enter our universe as explorers. They might wander

ur streets, see our frozen bodies, look through our possessions,
and wonder about the lives we led.
Which is why I have written this account. You, I hope, are one
of those explorers. You, I hope, found these sheets of copper and
deciphered the words engraved on their surfaces. And whether
 56 Ted Chiang
or not your brain is impelled by the air that onc
e impey
through the act of reading my words, the Patterns tha a Mig
thoughts become an imitation of the Patterns that once
mine. And in that way I live again, through you, The
Your fellow explorers will have found and
Tead
books that we left behind, and through the Collaborative si “
of your imaginations, my entire
civilization lives again, As i,
walk through our silent districts, imag
ine them as they Were
with the turret clocks striking the
hours, the filling Station,
crowded with gossiping neighbors,
criers reciting verse in the
public squares, and anatomists
giving lectures in the classrooms
Visualize all of these the next time
you look at the frozen world
around you, and it will become,
in your minds, animated and
vital again.
I wish you well, explorer, but I
wonder: Does the same fate
that befell me await you? I can
only imagine that it must, that
the tendency toward equilibrium
is not a trait peculiar to our
universe but inherent in all universes.
Perhaps that is Just a limi-
tation of my thinking, and your people
have discovered a source
of pressure that is truly eternal.
But my speculations are fanciful
enough already. I will assume
that one day your thoughts
cease, although I cannot fathom too will
how far in the future that migh
be. Your lives will end just t
as ours did, just as everyone’s
matter how long it takes, éventually must. No
equilibrium will be reached.
 Exhalation 57

lives we've led: none of them could have been predicted,

the none of them was inevitable. Our universe might have
because equilibrium emitting nothing more
than a quiet hiss.
— net that it spawned such plenitude is a miracle, one that is
™ hed only by your universe giving rise to you.
re hough I am long dead as you read this, explorer, I offer to
valediction. Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and
em
that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell
vf hs because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the
y
same.