Homeostasis and Extinction: Ted Chiang's "Exhalation"

“Exhalation,” a 2008 science fiction short story by Ted Chiang, virtuoso of the genre and the form, begins with a truism, refuted: “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” (37). The narrator’s promise is so alluring— knowledge of life’s origin, knowledge of its expiration, and knowledge of the relation between the two—that we may be forgiven for overlooking the parenthetical. Argon amounts to less than one percent of the air breathed within Earth’s atmosphere. The narrator specifies that “others call [air] argon,” others who may or may not live where the narrator does. In any case, Chiang has transported us elsewhere. Where, exactly? In a world governed by parameters and constraints distinct from Earth’s, yet recognizable to us—which is to say that “Exhalation” is a thought experiment. What if, we are invited to contemplate, inhalation and exhalation were distinct processes, rather than inseparable phases of an autonomic, autopoietic, and ecological cycle? Chiang severs inhalation from bodies, rendering it strictly mechanical. Exhalation, by contrast, remains the province of bodies; individuals partake in this activity whatever else they may be doing. The disembodied inhale literalizes resource extraction, and the embodied exhale a process of extinction coextensive with the achievement of a certain equilibrium or homeostasis. Perhaps unexpectedly, the extinctive exhale holds the key to a future that deflates operas of total destruction and annihilation. “Exhalation,” I propose, unlocks a horizon of human persistence contingent on Man’s exhaustion. All lungs in “Exhalation” are artificial. They at least appear so to us; within the world of the story, they are not seen as replicas of “actual” organs. Every day, all members of the humanoid species to