In the beginning, nothing was alive.
There were molecules.
They moved.
They collided.
Some broke apart.
Some joined together.
Some disappeared.
Nothing noticed.
Nothing intended.
Nothing was trying to continue.
But among the countless reactions, some produced substances that made other reactions easier.
A molecule changed.
The change produced another molecule.
That molecule helped a third reaction occur.
The third reaction produced something that made the first reaction easier.
Nothing had planned this.
Nothing knew it was happening.
Yet the reactions had begun to form a pattern.
Most changes went nowhere.
Some happened once and vanished.
But here and there, a change made another change more likely, and that change helped restore the conditions for the first.
A circle appeared.
Not a circle that could be seen.
A circle made of consequences.
The molecules did not travel around it like travellers on a road.
Rather, what happened at one place made something else possible elsewhere, and what happened there returned as a condition for what had happened before.
The pattern lasted a little longer.
Then a little longer still.
Around it, other molecules continued their restless collisions.
Most patterns disappeared.
This one did not.
It had no boundary.
No centre.
No name.
It was not an organism.
It was not yet even a thing.
But something had changed.
For the first time, some chemistry was helping to make more chemistry like itself possible.
And the chemistry did not know it.
It simply continued.
Again.
And again.
And again.
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