All life on Earth is derived from a single creature. We are all related. But forget Adam and Eve; think instead Adamoeba.

Put aside for one moment why Adamoeba was moved to divide that very first time (and discovered sex - or did that come after, when lots of adamoebinis were just soooo bored, yuh?) Can we say Adamoeba properly came of age when he first reacted to the world?

Was it the impact of a mote of dust or the temperature generated by a flicker of sunlight that induced Adamoeba's first stimulus-response action - albeit chemical or mechanical and aeons before the birth of the neuron?

Would we want to say that such a stimulus-response meant something, that for whatever stimulus and while Adamoeba generated a response, the generating of a response represented something of the world, internally, within him? Just like a vibrating water drop on a nudged table represents the nudge in the jittering surface of the drop.

You see where I might go with this?

I mean, from one Adamoeba there are so many possible Adamoebinis, but which of the many are likely realised out there among the stars, and which of the many may have come of age, may be sentient or even cogniscent.

Progress happens because there is a difference between the way things are and the way they might be. Any alien species that outgrew its Adamoeba and climbed out of its swamp will have spent, or be spending, time with a representation, a representation of the way the world is or the way it might be, or perhaps both.

Adamoeba need not even have a will. A propensity for happy accidents would suffice.

Are we part of some distant Adamoeba's mindset, threatened by some distant Adamoeba's happy accident?

Is it better not to know?

Jack Calverley:
Escapist writer of serious fiction or serious writer of escapist fiction, writer of SF any way