In any case, Chiang has transported us elsewhere. The narrator specifies that " others call argon," others who may or may not live where the narrator does. Argon amounts to less than one percent of the air breathed within Earth's atmosphere. 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. 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). "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.
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