Exhalation

The title story of the collection is in the first-person. The narrator is an unnamed mechanical being who lives in a peculiar world with a “solid chromium wall that extends from the ground up to the infinite sky” (39). The mechanical species also breathes through refillable lungs. Failing to refill one’s lungs results in almost immediate death but is a rare occurrence.

The most popular place to refill lungs are “filling stations” (37). This is a communal activity, and the beings bond over sharing “the great lung of the world, the source of all our nourishment” (38). While socializing at a filling station, the narrator hears a crier, or public announcer, mention that a turret clock, or public clock, rang off-time, which “had never happened before” (39). More of these public clocks fall out of sync. After an inspection, they find no flaws.

The narrator is not as invested in the clocks as others, as it is primarily “a student of anatomy” (39). Because death is uncommon in their world, aspects of the robots’ bodies are still a mystery to them, as there aren’t cadavers to study. Their brains, too, are incredibly delicate, and how they store memories is still up for debate.