"The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang (short story; 2007)

**Simply put, an absolutely perfect short story about how we view the choices we make in our lives**

Ted Chiang, second-generation Taiwanese-American, rose to prominence when his fantastic "Stories of your Life" was adapted into a movie with Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.  His first collection published after that, "Exhalation", was released to great fanfare and absolutely lived up to the hype.  That said, he's quietly been putting out story after story of truly breathtaking Science Fiction for decades

Chiang walks the line between the two competing camps of Science Fiction--those who believe that scifi must be grounded in hard science extended to its logical ends; and those play fast and loose and have futuristic technology be simply a backdrop.  Although Chiang is incredibly intelligent and bases many of his stories on the latest scientific advances, he takes these ideas and builds worlds upon them with the fundamental elements of the human spirit as his building blocks

Nowhere in his stories does he sit down and explain how the science works.  But neither is he simply making up spaceships and laser guns without a scientific background (not to imply I don't like those kinds of stories, they're great as well.  I'll post about some this month!).  Rather, he takes inspiration from the workings of the universe, but then takes them and writes profoundly human stories

I want to talk about "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", which is included in the above-mentioned "Exhalation" collection

This story was inspired by a lecture Chiang attended, in which Kip Thorne (nice guy, by the way) talked about the idea of stable wormholes that could theoretically connect one location to the same location at another time.  Obviously, none of these have ever been observed (or at least, not that they're telling us . . .), but the Math works out

Now, I absolutely adore time travel fiction.  Probably my favorite subgenre of scifi.  And because of that, I have very, very high standards.  The problem is that time travel is, as a superpower or narrative device or whatever, ridiculously overpowered.  Basically any physical, terrestrial problem can be solved fairly trivially.  And in general, characters that can solve problems trivially don't make for interesting stories.  There are a few ways to deal with this, in a narrative sense:

1. Just lean into it.  "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" did this, kind of--when our heroes need to get into the locked office, they just said, "ok so after this, let's steal the keys, travel back in time, and put them behind that sign," and sure enough, there were keys behind that sign.  Excellent
2. Make up some lame reason why you can't use time travel that way, because you need a certain amount of unobtanium or there are whatever laws or blah blah blah.  Everything from "Avengers: Endgame" to Harry Potter did it that way, and it always makes me roll my eyes (admittedly, "Bill & Ted's" also did this with the whole "San Dimas Time" rule.  Bogus)

3. Be very, very clever about it 

Ted Chiang is very, very clever.  And so he's written a story in which a traveler walks into a shop with a Gate that can take him into the future or the past.  And he takes that idea and does something marvelous with it

Chiang's second inspiration was Islamic fatalism, which is that faith's approach to the paradox of an all-powerful god.  If all events are as god has ordained, what's the point?  Well, a number of wise and wonderful Islamic scholars have had a great deal to say, in answer to that question, and Ted Chiang takes that and presents it in a heartbreakingly beautiful way

“Allah rewards those he wishes to reward and chastises those he wishes to chastise. The Gate does not change how he regards you.”

(it's worth noting, by the way, that neither I nor Ted Chiang are Muslim. I believe that the use of Islamic imagery and Islamic religious beliefs and Islamic humility before God in this story respects and honors these things, but obviously that's not my call to make! If any of my Muslim friends want to weigh in, I would very much like to hear your thoughts)

Fuwaad ibn Abbas finds this Gate, and in classic "Arabian Nights"-style story-within-a-story (in fact, the whole story itself is a tale ibn Abbas is telling to the Caliph), he listens to the proprietor tell the tales of others who have walked through this Gate, and what they have learned.  Of course, ibn Abbas asks questions and hears the answer, and the whole story has a gorgeous approach to the subject

“Suppose you learn that you are alive twenty years from now. Then nothing could kill you in the next twenty years. You could then fight in battles without a care, because your survival is assured.”

“That is possible,” he said. “It is also possible that a man who would make use of such a guarantee would not find his older self alive when he first used the Gate.”

Will ibn Abbas pass through the Gate himself?  What motivates him, clearly draws him to these tales of men and women who have leapt up and down their own timelines?  I guess you'll have to read it

I loved this story, because it takes a fanciful idea, drawn from scifi tropes of wormholes and time travel, places it in the setting out of the Arabian Nights, and then in the end tells one of the most human and grounded stories I've ever read.  A tale of regret and loss and pain and all the ways we deal with the events of our lives

In the end, although Fuwaad ibn Abbas lives in a world in which a shopkeeper holds a doorway to the past or future, really he lives in the same world that we do.  A world in which, "Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity."

What he makes of it, and what we make of it, is a matter of personal choice

This story was written in 2007, although I did not read it for the first time until 2019.  Upon learning its publication date, my first thought was to wonder what would have happened if I had read this story and understood its message when I was a 19-year-old.  But of course, such a thought is completely opposite of the lesson the story is trying to impart

I loved this story

Here's the text of the story online!

https://images.shulcloud.com/1202/uploads/Documents/TheMerchantandtheAlchemistsGate.pdf

And here's LeVar Burton reading it, because, yeah.  I do love that man:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0EzTi4kHJvyJMsRFVcZj2I

"Past and future are the same, and we cannot change either, only know them more full [. . .] If our lives are tales that Allah tells, then we are the audience as well as the players, and it is by living these tales that we receive their lessons."