Ted Chiang

Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated Novella

Quantum possibilities have been made reality in a device known as the "prism", the Plaga interworld signaling mechanism. Once activated, it connects to a parallel universe which gradually starts to diverge from that point on -- and people can talk to their "paraselves" in that other universe to see how things have gone differently for them in another life.

The story is included in the collection Exhalation: Stories (2019). A version of this story was published in The New York Times Magazine Fiction Supplement on April 28, 2019, under the title Better Versions of You.

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