There’s a classic short story by Ted Chiang in which a young merchant travels years ahead and meets his future self. Over the course of the story, the man receives warnings, promises and tips from the older, wiser version of himself

The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate is a short story by Ted Chiang in which a young merchant travels years ahead and meets his future self. In the story, the man receives warnings, promises, and tips from the older, wiser version of himself. 

Chiang is considered one of the greatest speculative fiction writers of our generation. He also wrote Story of Your Life and Exhalation: Stories, a collection of short sci-fi stories

The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate is a fantasy novelette written by American author Ted Chiang.  It was first published in 2007 by Subterranean Press.  The story is about a fabric merchant in ancient Baghdad who discovers a gateway to the future.  The merchant finds an alchemical device that can send a traveler back in time 20 years. 

The story is a lesson about accepting fate, or the will of Allah. As Bashaarat says, “you cannot avoid the ordeals that are assigned to you. What Allah gives you, you must accept”. 

The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2008, the Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 2008, and the Seiun Award for Best Foreign Short Fiction in 2009. In 2019, the novelette was included in the collection of short stories Exhalation: Stories

The themes of The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate include: 

• Repentance, atonement, and forgiveness 
• The value of knowledge and the path to attaining it 
• The mindset regarding the passage of time 
• Regret and happiness 
• Wisdom and change 

Chiang argues that even if our destinies are fixed, the journey itself is often its own reward. He also has a moral for those who place fate and free-will on the same pedestal

The story is set in the historic city of Baghdad and briefly in Cairo. The story is narrated by Fuwaad ibn Abbas, a fabric merchant in medieval Baghdad. Fuwaad visits a shop in a marketplace where he strikes up an instant rapport with the shop owner who claims to be an alchemist. The shop owner invites Fuwaad into the back workshop to see a mysterious black stone arch which serves as a gateway into the future. Fuwaad journeys to Cairo to travel through time in Cairo, visit Baghdad on his personal errand, and then return to Cairo to make it back through the Gate

Here are some quotes from The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate: 

• “Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity” 
• “Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough” 
• “Using the Gate is like taking a secret passageway in a palace, one that lets you enter a room more quickly than by walking down the hallway” 
• “What I showed you before was a Gate of Seconds,” he said. “This is a Gate of Years. The two sides of the doorway are separated by a span of twenty years”

According to a scientific hypothesis, meeting your future self would result in the dissolution of yourself. However, you can rely on your imagination to take you to your future self. 

While it is not possible to physically interact with your future self, you can think about and plan for your future self. For example, you can use motion capture software and a combination of 3D rendering, aging simulation, and browser technologies like Google’s speech API and WebGL. 

Our brains are wired for survival, so they prioritize what we are doing today. To be prepared to fight for our survival in the present, our brains have to think of our future self as a stranger.

The future self theory is a psychological theory that states that feeling close to your future self motivates people to delay present gratification in order to benefit themselves in the future. 

The future self is the version of you that exists beyond the present moment, representing the person you aspire to become in the days, weeks, months, or years ahead. It’s a dynamic concept that involves visualizing your future achievements, growth, and desired characteristics. 

The future self revolves around three ideas: 

• Ought-to selves: What one might become 
• Ideal or Hoped-for selves: What one would like to become 
• Feared selves: What one is afraid to become 

According to psychologist Hal Hershfield, the most important thing is to create a future self that you can relate to and see as yourself. If you visualize a future self that is completely different than your current self or one that isn’t clearly articulated, you will fail to reach your goals.

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