V. The Chemistry That Chose What Entered

The boundary had become part of the circle.

But the world outside was crowded with molecules.

Some were useful.

Some were useless.

Some interfered with the circle.

The boundary could not remain equally open to all of them.

So, very gradually, it became more difficult for some molecules to enter than others.

A useful molecule found a way through.

Another was held back.

A harmful substance arrived and was turned away.

Nothing decided which was which.

The chemistry simply made some passages easier and others harder.

And because different molecules entered at different rates, the chemistry inside began to change.

When there was more of what the circle needed, some reactions became stronger.

When there was less, others slowed.

The activity inside was beginning to affect what the boundary allowed.

And what the boundary allowed was beginning to affect the activity inside.

The circle was no longer merely receiving the world.

It was changing the terms on which the world could enter it.

Outside remained outside.

But the distinction had become active.

The chemistry had acquired a small preference—not a preference that anyone could feel, but a difference in what was permitted to happen.

Some conditions helped the pattern continue.

Others made continuation harder.

The boundary responded to those differences.

And so the circle began, in its tiny way, to regulate its circumstances.

It did not know what it needed.

It did not know that it was regulating anything.

There was no purpose hidden inside it.

There was only a growing organisation of consequences:

what entered changed the chemistry;

the chemistry changed the boundary;

the boundary changed what could enter.

The world had begun to matter differently on either side of the boundary.

And the chemistry had begun to participate in deciding which differences in the world would matter to it.