In a woodland, a wrought iron gate opens to a gravel road, offering a route to the future. The narrator finds their future self, who is twenty years older and has a kinder disposition. The discourse focuses on personal subjects such as health, money, professional fulfillment, and personal happiness. However, it is crucial to examine what we want to know about the future twenty years and how it will impact our present thinking and living. This scenario is based on Ted Chiang's novella, The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate, which investigates the notion of time travel in our brains.
The default networks in our brains facilitate our mental travels from the present into the near or long future. This capacity to think about the future is considered "the defining property of human intelligence" by psychologist Martin Seligman and his collaborator John Tierney. The magic gate phenomenon involves our thoughts careening back and forth between the present, now, and far future in a few seconds. Neuroimaging research has revealed the "default network," which occurs when we think about a presentation, which makes us contemplate what that presentation will entail for our job chances. This default network lights up when we think about a presentation we're working on, reminding us to remember other things we need to follow up on.