The pattern continued.
But it did not continue everywhere.
Sometimes a molecule arrived that stopped one of its reactions.
Sometimes the substances it needed became scarce.
Sometimes the whole pattern simply disappeared.
Yet elsewhere, another pattern began.
One reaction produced something another reaction could use.
That reaction produced something needed by the first.
Between them, a strange dependency grew.
Neither reaction could continue for long without the other.
The molecules moved through the pattern.
One change made another possible.
That change made another possible.
Eventually, something returned to where it had begun.
The circle had closed.
For a while, nothing happened.
Then the pattern began again.
And again.
It was not the same molecules returning to the same places.
The molecules came and went.
What remained was the relation between the reactions.
The circle did not preserve its materials.
It preserved a way for materials to be transformed.
Outside the circle, chemistry continued without it.
Inside the pattern, however, each reaction helped create the conditions for another.
The pattern had become less dependent on any particular molecule.
It depended instead on the continuation of the process.
A new substance entered.
The circle changed it.
Another substance left.
The circle replaced it.
Nothing guarded the pattern.
Nothing commanded it.
Yet the pattern resisted disappearance because its own activity helped restore what its activity required.
The molecules still knew nothing.
But the chemistry had acquired a new possibility.
It could continue because it produced the conditions for continuing.
And somewhere within that possibility, a circle had begun to behave almost like a promise:
what happens here may make what happens here possible again.
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