79 pages • 2-hour read
Exhalation
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Story 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 3 Summary: “What’s Expected of Us”
The story begins with the ominous message “THIS IS A WARNING. PLEASE READ CAREFULLY” (58). We learn about a popular handheld device called a Predictor, which has a single button and LED light. To people’s surprise, a Predictor will always flash before a person presses the button, “No matter what you do, the light always precedes the button press. There’s no way to fool a Predictor” (58). To achieve this, Predictors are built with a circuit that sends a signal back in time. The narrator doesn’t expound upon the actual science behind Predictors. What’s important, the narrator argues, is that Predictors “demonstrate that there’s no such thing as free will” (59).
Free will has been debated for centuries, but what makes Predictors so significant is people actually experience their lack of free will. After using a Predictor, about a third of users become “Like a legion of Bartleby the scriveners, they no longer engage in spontaneous action” and eventually fall into “a kind of waking coma” called “akinetic mutism” (59). On the lack of free will, the narrator points out that the absence of free will only became an issue when Predictors emphasized it.
Doctors attempt to coax people back into a regular routine. If Predictors are true, we’ve been living our lives without free will forever, so what different does it make? “But now I know” (60) many of the patients reply, remaining in their waking comas.
The narrator reveals themselves to be a person writing from the future. Using a communication device built with the same time-delay circuity as Predictors, the narrator comes with a warning for the reader: “Pretend that you have free will” (60). This is vitally important, they remark, because “Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has” (60).
Despite the warning, the narrator acknowledges that there is no way to stop what the Predictor will do to each person that tries it. Some will succumb to a coma-like existence, others will try to keep on living their lives. So why even bother with the warning? Humorously, the narrator explains in the last line, “Because I had no choice” (61).
“What’s Expected of Us” Analysis
“What’s Expected of Us” is a warning that builds narrative tension. Traditionally, the story lacks many of the tenants of a typical short story: the narrator doesn’t experience a personal journey through the events of a plot, and no other main character, named or unnamed, has a well-defined arc. The form of the story, however, immediately grabs the reader, particularly with those capitalized first lines “THIS IS A WARNING. PLEASE READ CAREFULLY” (58).
The use of second person is likewise effective. We appear in this world ourselves, rather than searching for a character to identify with. By writing “What’s Expected of Us” as a warning addressed to the reader, Chiang is able to use the story to talk about free will in a philosophical way while still holding the reader’s attention.
As with other stories in Exhalation, emerging technology drastically effects the human experience. In this case, something as simply designed as a Predictor drives many people into waking comas. The impact is so profound that the narrator must send a message from the future to try to alleviate the situation. In the Story Notes on “What’s Expected of Us,” Chiang writes, “Arguments are simply too abstract to sway most people. A physical demonstration, on the other hand, would be much more effective” (343). With this story, Chiang shows how technological advancements will present humans with more hands-on demonstrations of previously abstract philosophical questions, in this case, free will. For better or worse, the way we see ourselves and live our lives will continue to change.
Chiang uses humor to keep the story from becoming too bleak. One way the story achieves a humorous tone is by heightening reality. The existence of a product like a Predictor is already fantastic, especially as the narrator describes the science behind it as “a circuit with a negative time delay” (58). A third of Predictor users, millions of people, succumbing to waking comas is a startling and absurd visual as well. Chiang is likewise playful when he has his narrator state “Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has” (60). By using the science fiction genre, the story can create fictional technology that asks a philosophical question. With humor, the story avoids being dry with comedic details.
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