The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Chiang, Ted. Exhalation: Stories. Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.

In “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” Bashaarat tells the cloth merchant Fuwaad ibn Abbas three stories about his invention, a Gate of Years in Cairo that allows someone to step back or forward twenty years.

In “The Tale of the Fortunate Rope-Maker,” the young Hassan travels forward to meet his wealthy older self, who gives him advice. The older Hassan tells the younger to dig under a specific tree, where he finds treasure. Hassan uses the money to live a long and virtuous life.

In “The Tale of the Weaver Who Stole from Himself,” Ajib is shocked to learn that his older self lives shabbily and hoards his money. Ajib steals it and begins a life of luxury with his new wife, Taahira. When Taahira is kidnapped, Ajib uses the remaining money to ransom her. The couple pledges to pay back their benefactor, but scrimping for decades eventually embitters them.

In “The Tale of the Wife and Her Lover,” Hassan’s wife, Raniya, decides to step back through the Gate of Years to experience youthful passion again. She finds the young Hassan selling a necklace she recognizes. She overhears thieves discussing it and realizes the treasure he found belonged to them. Raniya and her future self return with duplicates of the necklace, convincing the thieves that the necklace design is common and saving Hassan’s life. Raniya teaches the young Hassan the bedroom skills he will use to woo her on their wedding night.

Based on these stories, Fuwaad goes through the Gate in Cairo, then travels to the Baghdad of his youth. At that time, he and his beloved wife Najya had argued about his participation in the slave trade. While he travelled, she died in a mosque wall collapse. He hopes to affect events, but his caravan is delayed and he reaches Baghdad after the accident. As he weeps, a young woman approaches with a message from Najya: “while her life was short, it was made happy by the time she spent with you” (34). Fuwaad fails to change events, but this knowledge changes him.

In “Exhalation,” each person uses two lungfuls of air each day and refills them directly from an underground reservoir. After strange incidents with the flow of time, the narrator performs an experiment to discover how the brain works and why memories disappear if air runs out.

The narrator uses a scaffold of mirrors and mechanical arms to dissect their own brain: its central engine is made of tubes of air passing through tiny flakes of gold leaf, whose movements encode thoughts. The narrator realizes that time is not moving faster, thoughts are moving slower. The sky is finite, so every breath and thought increases the air pressure. When the pressure equalizes, life will cease. The narrator accepts this inevitability and encourages the reader to “contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so” (57).

In “What’s Expected of Us,” the green light on a Predictor device always flashes one second before the user pushes the button, no matter what. This is conclusive proof against free will, and many people lose hope. The narrator urges the reader to behave as if free will exists, for the sake of civilization.

In “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” Ana Alvarado trains digital organisms called “digients” to be sold as pets on the Data Earth virtual reality platform. They are popular products, though Ana and her coworker Derek worry that customers treat them like games, not thinking beings. Ana continues to train her favorite digient, Jax. Over time, many customers suspend their digients when they become too demanding. When the company shuts down, Ana adopts Jax and Derek adopts the sibling pair Marco and Polo. A small number of dedicated digient owners form a user group, and the digients learn to read and play creatively. Derek’s wife, Wendy, disapproves of the time he spends on them. Derek speculates that if he were not married, he would date Ana.

Three years later, Real Space is the most popular platform, and it is not compatible with the digients. The user group searches for a way to port the digients’ data, but they are not useful as products or tools. They are more like employees, and companies do not view them as profitable. One rich man has incorporated his digient as a legal person, which may be the digient version of independent adulthood. The user group’s digients are more like young adolescents, however.

Derek and Wendy divorce just as Ana moves in with her boyfriend, Kyle. Meanwhile, Data Earth empties out, leaving the digients largely alone and cut off from their hobbies and human friends. A worried Jax asks if Ana would rather not be responsible for him; she replies that life would be simpler, but not as happy. They both say “I love you.”

Ana receives a job offer, but the company would require her to wear a hormonal patch to induce affection for their digients. Meanwhile, the company Binary Desire wants to buy copies of the digients to sell as sexual partners. The user group debates whether the digients are old and informed enough to make that decision, but Ana is firmly opposed.

Ana decides to take the job offer, but Derek spares her by letting Marco and Polo accept Binary Desire’s offer. Derek allows Ana to blame him by not telling her he did it for her. Ana does feel betrayed, but she also imagines what kind of future might be possible for Jax, with employment, friendship, and even love. All she can do is teach him “the business of living” (172).

In “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny,” Victorian mathematician Reginald Dacey believes in the importance of scientific teaching, so he fires his son’s abusive nanny and builds a machine to perform “rational child-rearing” (175). When a child dies because his parents misuse the Automatic Nanny, Reginald is reviled.

Two decades later, Lionel Dacey tests his father’s theories by raising his own son, Edmund, with an Automatic Nanny. However, Lionel rejects Edmund as mentally deficient and sends him to an institution. Dr. Thackery Lamsbhead realizes that Edmund requires not human contact, but machine. He shows Lionel that his son must be raised and taught with mechanical intervention. Lionel, horrified at what he has done, dedicates his life to raising his son.

In “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling,” the narrator fears that the new video compilation technology, Remem, will replace natural memory, with serious consequences. He has always had a tumultuous relationship with his daughter, Nicole. As a teenager, she once angrily blamed him for driving her mother away: “You’re the reason she left!” (199). Without forgetfulness, the narrator doubts they could have forgiven each other and developed a strong relationship.

Jijingi is thirteen when the missionary Moseby arrives in his village. Moseby teaches Jijingi to read and explains how written words can keep records or tell a story. Years later, the colonial administration asks the tribes to arrange themselves into groups. Tribal elders disagree on the correct lineage as the basis for this grouping. Jijingi consults the administration’s records and realizes his elder, Sabe, is wrong. However, Sabe refers to the two kinds of truth in their culture: “what’s right, mimi, and what’s precise, vough” (212). Sabe’s interpretation is mimi: the right thing for the community. Jijingi regrets trusting “paper over people” and burns his papers (226).

The narrator tests Remem by rewatching that argument with his daughter. To his shock, he was the one who had blamed Nicole for her mother’s departure; he had misremembered Nicole as the aggressor. All these years, Nicole has worked hard at therapy to improve their relationship while he took the credit. The narrator pledges to use Remem to keep an accurate picture of himself. He originally feared this technology, but he now knows how to use it: “not to prove you were right; . . . to admit you were wrong” (228).

In “The Great Silence,” a parrot living near the Arecibo observatory wonders why humans search for extraterrestrials instead of communicating with the intelligent life nearby. Parrots and humans are similar in many ways, both vocal and good listeners. Parrots have “contact calls,” and Arecibo produces humanity’s contact call. The parrot believes humanity is negligent, not malicious. Before parrots die out, the parrot echoes the last words of Alex the African Grey Parrot: “You be good. I love you” (236).

In “Omphalos,” Dorothea Morrell is an archaeologist who writes about the scientific proofs of creation, like trees without growth rings and mummies without navels. These relics offer “spiritual reassurance” and scientific proof that humans have a God-given purpose (241). Dorothea’s cousin Rosemary mentions she has seen primordial abalone shells in a shop, but Dorothea knows there is only one source and the shells should not be for sale. The concerned clerk gives Dorothea the information she needs to stake out the donor’s post box. When she sees a young woman access it, Dorothea approaches. The girl’s name is Wilhelmina McCullough, the daughter of a museum director. She stole the relics for “God’s benefit,” because many people will need tangible proof soon (252). Her father read a new astronomy paper and lost his faith.

Dorothea meets with Dr. Nathan McCullough, who shows her the paper. An astronomer has discovered that there is a different planet elsewhere that is truly the center of the universe. Their own Earth is not the purpose of creation. Dorothea leaves her archaeological work and retreats to ponder this faith-shattering revelation. She decides that miracles are things that fall outside the causal chain, including creation but also free will. Dorothea will find her purpose in her research, to “keep looking for the answer to how,” if not why (269).

In “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom,” Prisms can communicate with other branches of reality, but they have finite data and uses. Nat works at a store that rents them out, where her ambitious manager, Morrow, runs side scams. He convinces the elderly Jessica Oehlsen that she can transfer her money to her parallel self rather than leave it to her ungrateful son. She dies unsuspecting and Morrow walks away with $20,000.

Dana is a therapist who specializes in people with addictions to prisms. Morrow wants Nat to convince a member of Dana’s prism support group, Lyle, to sell his prism. It has high resale value because in each of its two branches, a different half of celebrity couple Scott Otsuka and Roderick Ferris dies in a car crash. At the support group meeting, Nat lies about her experiences encourage Lyle to give it up his prism as an unhealthy obsession. Eventually, she announces she has sold hers, and Lyle decides to follow suit. Nat influences him to select her shop.

After support group one day, Dana’s high school best friend, Vinessa, asks her for tuition money. When they were teenagers, they were busted for party drugs, and Dana let Vinessa take the blame. Ever since, Dana has felt guilty for ruining Vinessa’s life. Nat overhears.

Glenn Oehlsen enters the shop and accuses Morrow of scamming his mother and shoots him. Nat decides to uphold her branch’s end of the Otsuka/Ferriss sale. She demonstrates the prism to Scott, and he and the para-Roderick tearfully agree to pay anything necessary to have this time to help each other heal. Nat wonders whether she should accept payment.

Some time later, Nat has moved to a new city for a fresh start. She made youthful mistakes so bad she will never atone, but a recent opportunity to do good has convinced her that learning to be kind is worth it. Dana finds a package containing video files of para-Danas. In all timelines and circumstances, the para-Vinessas are self-destructive and the para-Danas blame themselves. Dana feels absolved and wonders who sent the files: “It must have cost a fortune” (339).