The circle had learned to let some things in and keep other things out.
But something stranger began to happen.
A reaction produced a substance.
The substance remained.
At first, it helped another reaction.
Then there was too much of it.
The reaction slowed.
The circle had altered itself.
And because it had altered itself, what happened next was different.
Elsewhere in the circle, another reaction produced a different substance.
This one changed the boundary.
The boundary admitted more of one molecule and less of another.
The new arrivals changed the first reaction.
The first reaction changed the substance that had changed the boundary.
The effect had returned to its beginning.
Nothing had gone in a straight line.
What happened had come back.
The circle was no longer merely repeating itself.
It was being altered by the consequences of its own activity.
Sometimes the alteration helped.
Sometimes it hindered.
Sometimes it disappeared.
But when an effect returned and changed the conditions that had produced it, the chemistry had acquired a new kind of relation with itself.
It could respond to what it had done.
Not because it knew what it had done.
There was still no knowing.
Only chemistry answering chemistry.
A little more of this.
A little less of that.
A reaction speeding up.
Another slowing down.
A boundary opening.
A boundary closing.
And through all these changes, the circle began to maintain conditions that allowed its activity to continue.
It had not become a machine.
No one had wound it up.
It had become something that could be changed by its own consequences.
The chemistry had begun to feed back on itself.
And because the past activity of the circle could now alter its present activity, the next turn of the circle was never quite the same as the last.
The circle was beginning to have a history.
No comments:
Post a Comment