Short story written by Ted Chiang which explores the nature of time and the fixed laws of nature itself. But while time is fixed...that doesn\'t necessitate that we have to experience it linearly.

\"In devising a fictional concept that sets time out for us, future and past, as something essentially static, like the pattern in a carpet (it is perhaps no accident that almost all of those involved with the gate deal with things that must be woven or knotted), in which events can be observed, but not shifted or changed, Chiang manages to convey to us, both here and in \"Story of Your Life,\" the world as seen from this view: an unchanging tale, already existing, past and future, that we live through, participate in, act out, and learn, like an actor learning what play he\'s in by saying the lines. That he has, more than once, found elegant, complex conceits for this difficult thematic territory, that not only convey understanding, but even experience, and which are also intricate, intellectually and emotionally involving fictions, is a truly remarkable achievement. It\'s interesting, instructive, and aesthetically pleasing to watch an artist as intelligent and sensitive as Chiang come to grips in different ways with, and develop different correlatives for, essentially the same field of experience and perception. The number of works in his small oeuvre devoted to this theme seem to indicate that, for him, this is, indeed, where we are.

But he doesn\'t just present this material. He also suggests how we should be and act in such a world. Within the scope of determined events he finds a kind of freedom - the freedom to accept, to participate, to join one\'s will to events; freedom in how to consider, or take, what happens; a freedom of understanding. Perhaps understanding is so important because, in the face of events, it\'s basically the best we can do.\"

- William Mingin (Strange Horizons reviews)

90 - Lore Dive: Destiny Universe & Dimensions