Exhalation

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.