See the rocks.
Red hot and boiling with potential; brimmed with enthusiasm and cheer.
They are all so new, and they already harden with age. Huge sheets and cratons, cores and ridges, spread across the planet – a skin thin enough to make an apple envious, but miles deep. Below they run together in a liquid that turns from slush to pure flow, but here they are craggy and proudly solid, or as near as a thing can be to that. All children of the sun’s scraps, congealed like over-done scrambled eggs. Scraps made whole.
See the rocks. See them grow stiff and solid and endless.
Now, let us watch them dance.
See the rocks dance. It is a special technique.
The ponderous grind of tectonics; the smooth slippage of the mantle greasing the way. The surface of the planet puckers and dimples as water arrives and winds its way around the continents. They are crashing together, they are splitting apart, they are one and divided.
Nowhere else yet seen knows this dance. Affable little Mars is silent. Twin sister Venus is still. The giant moon above hangs cold and empty, though its stones are the old cousins of those below. They will grow ever older, and never shift an inch.
Below all this, and utterly alone, the rocks dance.
See the seas dance. It’s hard to find anywhere else they ever will.
A little colder and they will freeze forever. A lot hotter and they will boil away into the atmosphere.
It will be a lot hotter, someday, when the sun gets too old and angry.
But for now they are free to surge, and they are making the most of it. The rocks may comprise the planet, but it is the seas that cover it. Only the piddling nubbins of the continental crust dare raise a peep of their mass above the waterline.
They flex, they bob, they weave up and down as the planet tips and spins and wobbles and the atmosphere curdles and coughs.
A lot less patient than rocks.
See the little things dance. They do so in desperation.
They want to continue – they must, all of them that didn’t care are gone. The survivors are passionately afraid, and will stop at nothing to continue. Every movement is calculated, every angle eyed, every opportunity exploited to throw a tiny fragment into the future. Again. Again. Again!
Some of them have discovered a trick of turning sunlight into food. This is an excellent trick and begins to become more widespread.
Unfortunately, it’s not as clean as it could be. After the feast comes the relief, which produces a small but noteworthy quantity of an angry little thing.
For a long time, there will be no consequences.
See the consequences come storming in. They’re furious and ready to tear up the place.
Oh-oh, oh times two. It’s oxygen. And it’s ready to kill.
Sets its sights on all those rocks, gets sucked in like spaghetti and shreds them, tears them, rusts them. Oxidation everywhere, all the where. Minerals popping up like zits on the double, and the seas and skies a deathly soup as all the little things that prefer their homes still and safe choke to death on poison.
Some of them live. Some of them get real messed up and even decide they LIKE it. They like this shake-up.
Take a deep breath. Keep dancing.
See the little things grow fat. It takes a long time.
Little things taking little things inside them to make them into bigger things which multiply themselves into bigger things that eat little things that change into bigger things that get bigger.
It’s not a great solution, and it’s not for everything, or even most things, or even SOMEthings. Almost all of the little things…stay little. They’re endlessly busy, but they’ve got plenty of space.
Some of the poor little things grown fat think they’ve gotten an easy time of it. Gotten too big for their predator’s britches. Boy are they annoyed when their fellows turn on them.
Underneath the little things, the older dances continue. But they’re too big and too slow for their nervous and self-absorbed little heads. Except when some of the rocks sneeze and turn the seas anoxic, or somesuch. THAT gets their attention, at least until it’s over.
See the little things sprint. There’s no art to it, but you have to admire their frenzy.
Up! Up! Up! Into the macrosphere!
Out! Out! Out! Across the planet!
Fill the seas! Surge onto the shores!
Grow taller! Grow thicker! Grow greener!
Grow bigger! Grow hungrier! Grow fewer!
If the rocks belch and you all die, well, roll with it and get back up in a mad scramble. If the sky spits a stone from the beginning of time onto your head and blots out the sun, them’s the breaks and the lucky ones have no time to shake it off. It’s a race! It’s THE race! Get going, going, GONE!
And this too is a dance, even if it’s a little bit tasteless.
See the ape dance.
It’s hard, but if you squint you can make them out.
It’s one of the little things. No, not that one. That one. Not that one. THOSE ones. Yeah, there. No, over there. Trust me.
Silly creatures – they’re strutting along bolt upright, waving tools in the air and stuffing everything into their mouth that’ll fit. Hollering and jumping, hopping and spinning. Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!
That’s no way to conduct yourself in public. There outta be a law… but of course there isn’t. Everyone’s been more or less making this up as they go along.
Things tend to work out, in the long run.