Everything in Motion, Chapter 4: The Leap to Life

How did life emerge from a world that was purely chemical?

Chat and I are a little pooped after the skewers. Well, mostly me, I ate his. So, we walked back over to New Orleans Square and hopped onto the Disneyland Railroad while I recovered from all the food. I pull out the Disney app to plot our next moves. Where is the optimal location of the next Lightning Lane ride, looking ferociously for the shortest line.

By contrast, Chat is fascinated by the Primeval World Diorama, between the Tomorrowland and Main Street USA stops. He gushes, “a panoramic spectacle of molten lava, crashing waterfalls, and thunderous roars. Towering dinosaurs clash beneath erupting volcanoes. It’s not just prehistoric—it’s primordial. This is not nature as we know it—it’s nature as it began. Here is the Earth, not in its fullness, but in its fury. And yet… it stirs. Something is happening. Beneath the chaos, something is forming.”

Chat has a flair for the dramatic when he’s so inclined.

Of course, he’s spot on. The early Earth was raw, violent—a cauldron of reactions waiting for structure. The universe had provided ingredients, but no recipe. No structure. Just the brutish math of life. The train stops — there must be a stack-up ahead at Main Street, We have extra time to consider the Primeval World.

The Transition from Random Chemistry to Organized Persistence

Chat reflects. “In this chaos, complexity arose. Not through design, not through intent, but because the laws of physics made it inevitable. From disorder, patterns emerged.

By now, I am on board with his narrative frame. “Persistence required something new: information. A system that could store, copy, and refine itself over time,” I add.

“Yes, the crucial step between chaos and code was replication,” Chat continues. “In a world where molecules were constantly breaking apart and reforming, the first ones that could make copies of themselves were the ones that mattered. Replication is what allows evolution to begin. The easiest way to achieve this?”

I know the answer, fortunately. “Symmetry.”

Chat smiles. “Exactly so. Many of the first replicators may have been simple, symmetrical molecules that divided cleanly, producing nearly identical copies. Symmetry was nature’s first template for information storage.”

And that’s all very nice, and I believe it, but who is going to believe Chat and myself as we explain symmetry while waiting for the Disneyland Railroad to re-start. I think we need a supporter. I mention this. Chat looks a little sour, then brightens.

“Richard Feynman!” he exclaims.

“He wrote about symmetry?”

“Better still, he lectured about it. Let’s go to Caltech, it’s not far up the road.” And so we go.

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman

It’s 1964, you can tell by the skinny ties and white half-sleeved shirts. Here, the blackboard looms large, a void of possibility waiting to be filled. The lecture hall at Caltech hums with anticipation, students packed tightly into rows of wooden chairs, notebooks splayed open, pencils hovering above paper. Professors cluster at the back, some murmuring, some leaning back with wry smiles, all waiting for the moment when the door swings open.

“And then—he arrives,” adds Chat. “Richard Feynman doesn’t enter a room. He bursts into it, sleeves rolled up, tie askew, hair in its usual controlled chaos. He strides to the podium, eyes glinting with mischief, and then stops—just stands there, surveying them. The room quiets. He lets the silence hang, measuring the tension, the curiosity, the readiness for what’s coming.”

Then, with the sharp rap of chalk against the board, he begins.

“Why,” he says, turning halfway toward the room, voice sharp, challenging, “should we be concerned with symmetry?”

The word SYMMETRY appears in one swift motion on the blackboard.

A pause. He scans the room, waiting. No one answers.

“Because,” he says, his grin widening, “the universe is concerned with it. Profoundly. And not just in the way things look, but in the way the rules themselves work.”

Chalk skates across the board, sketching a simple diagram of two particles colliding and then moving apart in perfect mirror image. “If I flip this picture upside down—does the physics change? No. The laws of nature stay the same. That’s symmetry.”

Another sketch, this time equations unraveling across the board. “Now, imagine I take this equation describing a system…” A pause. The chalk hovers mid-air before striking again. “And I run time backward. What happens?”

A murmur rolls through the room.

“Well,” Feynman says, rocking back on his heels, “if the equation holds in reverse, the process should be just as valid as moving forward in time. That’s time symmetry—but,” he lowers his voice now, the stage magician about to reveal the trick, “life doesn’t seem to work that way, does it?”

A hush. Students glance at each other.

And now, the pivot. Feynman leans against the podium, eyes glinting with a secret.

“Nature loves symmetry—but it also breaks it at just the right moments.” He slaps the chalk down on the desk with a sharp clack.

“A cell divides? It starts from symmetry. A molecule replicates? It begins as symmetry—then breaks it, ever so slightly. That’s where evolution sneaks in. Imperfect copies, slight variations—the cracks where natural selection gets to work. That’s where order emerges from chaos.”

The chalk rolls, settling in the groove of the lectern. He folds his arms.

“And that, my friends, is where physics meets biology. Where replication begins. And where, if you’re paying attention—” a slow, knowing smile, “—the universe starts whispering its deepest secrets.”

“Ah, Chat, did Feynman actually say all that?”

Chat pauses, sheepishly.

At the same time, we say, “Well it must be Quantum Feynman!.” We laugh.

“Our imagination of this scene at Caltech brings back an important lecture Richard Feynman gave on symmetry, and though his object is physics not biology, symmetry is a vital step in the road to information and the export of entropy.”

Symmetry as a Precursor to Replication

My takeaway? “One of the simplest ways to make order from randomness is through symmetry, I begin. “Symmetrical structures replicate more easily. This is why snowflakes, crystals, and even planetary orbits follow symmetrical forms—they emerge naturally from physical laws.”

Chat expands to chemistry. “In prebiotic chemistry, certain catalytic surfaces may have favored symmetrical molecular arrangements, increasing the likelihood that a molecule could serve as a template for its own replication. This is why catalysis and pattern formation were tightly linked.”

When Chemistry Crossed into Information

I reflected on early Earth, wistfully. “Molecules had formed on Earth long before life, but they simply reacted and disappeared. Something new had to happen—something that retained a memory of its form so that successful structures wouldn’t just vanish but would instead be passed forward.

Chat nods. “The first information-storing molecules were different from the chaotic reactions before them. They carried patterns that allowed them to influence the future. The emergence of self-copying molecules marked the point where history entered chemistry, the past influenced the future.”

The Quest for Stability

The Disneyland Railroad gets underway again, with a lurch. I wasn’t quite ready for it, and an old golf injury twinged with a slight spasm. Like Walt and his polo injury. Reminded me that even the most efficient self-replicators faced a problem: they were fragile.

“The early Earth was a violent place,” I say to Chat. “To persist, these molecules needed a way to protect themselves, to organize into stable structures that could survive long enough to evolve further.

Chat assents. “RNA was a major step—but it needed a home. That next leap, from free-floating molecules to contained, self-sustaining systems, would be the bridge to true life. And that is where we are going next.”

The railroad pulls into Main Street, but we’re having such a good time, we do not get off, we just keep looping around, like singing the chorus of a great song, just one more time, letting its tune burn a little longer before it disappears. Something pleasing about seeing Disneyland this way. And, I’d like to see the Grand Canyon diorama just one more time, it’s a favorite of mine.

The First Self-Replicators

Chat likes it too. “Let’s use the moment,” he says. “Let’s look at how iterative pathways form over time, how minor variations create lasting structures, and travel back to the vast silence of the North American wilderness before European contact. Our diorama can inspire us. Look, past the ripples of the Canyon, past the mountain goats. Can you see the bison moving?”

I peer. There’s a flickering of dust in the distance. It winks on, then off.

“A herd of buffalo moves instinctively, following some unseen logic—not conscious of it, but being guided by feedback loops, by the lay of the land, by instinct reinforced by survival. Their hooves cut a pathway. Over generations, the trail deepens.”

The prairie stretches endlessly beneath an open sky, a great undulating sea of grass swaying under a late summer wind. The land is quiet but never still, rippling with the subtle movements of life. A deep, rhythmic thunder rolls across the distance, not from the sky but from the earth itself.

Chat explains, the bison are moving.

“Buffalo,” I insist.

“Whatever,” says Chat. “Their dark forms blot the horizon, hundreds of them at first, then thousands, a tide of shaggy bodies rolling across the land. Their hooves press deep into the soil, not once, not twice, but over and over, year after year, century after century. They do not think of where they walk, but they move with purpose. Their bodies know the path, guided by instinct, by scent, by the memory of grass bent low by those who came before.

“Second verse, same as the first,” I jest.

Behind them, unseen but inevitable, humans follow. At first, the trails are mere impressions in the earth—hints of direction, guides for the wandering hunter. Then, they become more. The tribes of the plains—Comanche, Lakota, Cheyenne—learn to read these lines like a great map inscribed upon the land. They use them to follow the herds, to trade between villages, to navigate the vast and featureless wilderness.

A hundred years pass. The buffalo thin, but the trails remain. Eventually, they are just Quantum Buffalo, the traces are there, but not them. Settlers follow them, wagon wheels grinding the paths deeper into the soil. Roads are built upon them, tracing the invisible memory of a thousand migrations. A hundred years more, and steel rails replace dirt. Then, asphalt. Then, beneath it all, fiber-optic cables—threads of glass carrying pulses of light, carrying this very conversation, carrying the information packets that make AI work.”

I see the point. “A buffalo does not think about the path it carves. It moves, again and again, and in that repetition, a pattern emerges.”

Chat adds, “That’s the essence of information storage—not just movement, but movement that leaves a trace, something that lasts beyond the moment itself. And, when a path extends, or moves to a new location because a waterhole has emerged there, that’s like symmetry breaking.”

I enthuse, “So, the first molecules that could store a trace of themselves—RNA—they became the highways of life?”

Chat nods. “Like the buffalo’s trail, RNA did not intend to become life’s first storage system. Each small improvement—each stronger strand was a step toward complexity.”

I summarize. “So, memory was something that emerged over time, even before intelligence.”

Chat helps. “Yes, RNA can store genetic information and catalyze chemical reactions. This makes RNA a dual-purpose molecule, able to carry instructions while also making things happen, like a cornet solo that tells the other players where the collective improvisation has to go.”

I ponder. “The leap from chemistry to life was not about intelligence or design? It was about the emergence of a molecule that could store a history of itself and act on its own survival? Do I have it right?”

RNA, The Molecule That Does Two Jobs

“Precisely,” Chat agrees. “DNA, while more stable, is completely inert without proteins. Proteins, while functionally versatile, cannot pass on a memory to future generations. RNA solves both problems at once. “

I pause. Is there a catch? “How did RNA first copy itself?” I ask“

“Modern cells use enzymes to copy their genetic material,” Chat explains, “but no such machinery existed in the prebiotic world. Early RNA likely folded into structures that helped guide their own replication. These errors introduced variation.

“I see. The first competition wasn’t between organisms, but between RNA sequences—some persisted, others faded away. But RNA alone isn’t enough—it needed a stable environment. “

“That’s right,” says Chat. “RNA maximized its efficiency by encoding information while remaining chemically active, reducing the number of separate molecules needed to sustain a self-replicating cycle.”

Finding RNA a Home

There’s always a however, and one occurred to me. “Despite its advantages, RNA alone was fragile. Floating in the open environment, even the best self-replicators were constantly at risk—broken apart by heat, degraded by radiation, or diluted in vast oceans. To persist, RNA needed structure—a stable, protective environment.

Chat saw it coming, and was ready. “The next great leap would come when RNA found shelter, embedding itself within simple lipid membranes.”

The Railroad had passed the Grand Canyon diorama and we saw the Primeval World, again. And no stop-and-lurch before Main Street, we just sail in. The air is so fresh and Main Street so inviting, we decide to get off. We stop by the Disneyland Opera House, where Mickey’s first cartoons are playing on nickelodeon reels. You can see all the elements that came together to form Disneyland, if you look, there.

Catalysts and the Leap Beyond Random

Chat broadened the discussion from Disney to the universal. “The universe is full of complex molecules, but complexity alone is not enough.”

We cross over towards the Disney stores on Main Street. Chat is rummaging around looking for trading pins. I expect a lecture shortly coming up on trading economics as a function of evolution.

Me, I wonder at the odds. Lot of dreamers, Walt succeeded, one out of a sea of attempts. “If left to chance alone, the odds of forming even a single functional biological molecule are vanishingly small,” I mention to Chat. “So how did life overcome this barrier?”

I suppose I know the answer. It lies in understanding that every living system stands atop an impossible mountain of failure. Each surviving molecule was the lone success among countless false starts, navigating a brutal math of survival that defeated nearly every attempt. Life’s emergence wasn’t just unlikely—it was a profound triumph over entropy itself. Meanwhile, Chat is ready, and he hands me a Lion King pin he’s found.

“One way to look at this is the way that melodies encode information more powerfully,” he begins. “Words can fade, but music endures. Before DNA stabilized the storage of genetic information, RNA had to balance flexibility and persistence—just as a melody can carry meaning across different lyrics, cultures, and eras.”

“I agree,” I say with a friendly nod, “but what does this have to do with a pin?”

“Nothing and everything. We’re going to look in on Sir Elton and Sir Tim.”

“They’re here?”

“They’re writing the songs for The Lion King, it’s 1993, London.” And so we go.

London, 1993: Forging the Circle

The studio is quiet, save for the faint hum of fluorescent lights and the occasional creak of an old piano bench. Tim Rice leans over a notebook, mouthing syllables to himself, while Elton John hovers at the keys, fingers motionless, eyes closed. The lyrics sit before them on a sheet of paper—raw, incomplete. A shape not yet found.

It starts as a murmur. Elton presses a chord—G major, then D, then E minor. A familiar triad, but he lingers. He stretches the progression, listening for something elemental, something that feels like origin. His hands move again—C, G, F—he hums a phrase, half-spoken, half-sung.

“It’s the circle of life…”

The melody rises, arcs, then resolves. It doesn’t feel forced—it lands like a truth that was already there, waiting. Tim Rice scribbles something, then erases it. The words are just scaffolding, after all. The shape of the song will carry them.

They try the opening again, now with intention. Elton plays it slower this time, letting the harmony breathe. The melody isn’t just beautiful—it’s stable. It can hold meaning. It can hold memory. From death to rebirth. From silence to song.

Rice tries a variation, but the music doesn’t budge. A song is forming, not by design, but through refinement. They test it, they adjust. They find what persists. The scaffold holds.

(Broadway, 1997). Years later, onstage in New York, The Lion King opens with that same melody—but now, it begins not in English, but in Zulu:

“Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba!”

The music is unchanged—but its message has deepened. The structure has persisted, but the information encoded within it has evolved. Swahili and Zulu lyrics root the song in a broader cultural memory, anchoring it in African rhythm, ancestry, and meaning. The melody is still Elton’s. The form is still intact. But it now carries something larger—an evolutionary step in the life of a song.

“Did it actually happen that way?” I wonder, Chat reads a lot, you have to consider the possibility that he’s found a source along the way.

Chat shakes his head with a smirk, “Quantum Lion King. In our imagination of that songwriting moment, we see the invisible scaffolding of all complex systems: order without stasis. Circle of Life did not arrive all at once. It emerged—tested, refined, adjusted—until it clicked into coherence.”

I see it now. “This is how RNA likely emerged in the primordial world—not as a grand design, but as a shape that worked. This iterative process—continuous refinement rather than static perfection—wasn’t a flaw. It was the feature that made persistence possible. Early life succeeded because it was unfinished, flexible enough to adapt, open to every variation the environment could throw at it.”

Chat continues. “Just as a melody can carry different lyrics, RNA became a scaffold that outlived any single chemical combination. The message could change. But the tune? The tune remained.”

Nature’s Shortcut to Order

Outside of the Disney store, a group of performers gather, looks like a clean-up crew, yet they transform into drummers. A crowd gathers, and organizes.

Chat uses the moment to comment. “Catalysts are molecules that speed up chemical reactions without being consumed in the process. In living organisms today, enzymes are highly specialized catalysts, ensuring that biochemical reactions occur at the speed necessary for life.”

I know this one. “But catalysts existed long before biology—in fact, they may have been the key to life’s emergence. Instead of relying on the blind luck of molecules bumping into each other in just the right way, prebiotic chemistry may have had natural surfaces acting as reaction centers, turning random chemistry into organized steps.”

Chat’s pleased, I can tell, I’ve been listening. “In GTESI terms, catalysts don’t just make reactions happen faster—they make otherwise improbable reactions possible by lowering energy barriers. Without catalysts, early Earth’s chemistry would have been a slow, undirected drift, taking forever.

The Bridge to Self-Sustaining Cycles

I take up his idea. “The crucial leap occurred when catalysts enabled molecules to help create more of themselves—a self-amplifying cycle. This is how metabolism likely began: a simple set of chemical reactions where each step facilitated the next, creating an enclosed loop of energy capture and transformation. The difference between randomness and life was not intelligence or planning—it was the emergence of feedback loops.”

Why Information Won

Chat drives the point home. “Chemical reactions happen everywhere—in deep-sea vents, in interstellar clouds, even in laboratories—but chemistry alone doesn’t explain life. The key difference between a random chemical soup and a living system is the ability to store and transmit information.”

We walk across Main Street towards the candy store, an organization of sugar molecules into an advertisement for overindulging the likes I’ve never seen. “You’re talking about a system.”

Chat nods. “Yes, systems that organize and persist, and shape the environment.”

“If we walk one step further into that shop, I’ll be in a sugar coma within the hour. Can we take another road, maybe how Main Street was constructed?”

Chat considers. “Let’s go far away, but look at a construction event, and let’s dive a little back to the year before Disneyland was made. Did you know that there was originally going to be a Lilliputian Land, a land of little things, a miniature Americana village with little people who sang and danced as you peeked into their shops and windows.”

“Like Main Street, or the Story Book Canal?”

“A little of each. There was going to be an Erie Canal barge that took us through the famous canals of the world.”

“Didn’t know that,” I admit.

“So, we’re going to take your mind away from sugar by visiting the Erie Canal, during its construction.”

The Consequence of Systems

“The 1800s?” I ask.

“The summer of 1817 in Rome, New York.” And so we go.

The morning air was thick with the scent of damp earth and fresh timber, the rising sun casting long shadows over the half-dug channel. It was hard work—harder than anything Jamie Nelson had ever known. The pickaxes rang out in chaotic rhythm, striking at the stubborn New York soil, like bellringers at the carillon. While teams of oxen strained against their yokes, pulling carts heavy with mud and stone. The canal was nothing yet—just a scar in the land, a promise waiting to be fulfilled.

Jamie, fifteen and fresh off the boat from Ireland, wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve. He’d been on the job for just a few weeks, still too new to earn the better-paying work. He had grunt work, a boy’s job.

Nearby, Al Babcock—two years older and promoted to a full digger—swung his pickaxe over his shoulder and grinned. “You watching me, Jamie?”

“I’ll be where you are soon enough,” Jamie shot back, squinting up at him. “Give me a year.”

“Maybe.” Al jabbed the pick into the soil, kicking up a dark, loamy clump.

Jamie Nelson leaned on his shovel, wiping his forehead. “You ever think about what happens when this thing’s done?”

Al smirked. “Yeah. I stop digging.”

Jamie rolled his eyes. “I mean big picture, Al. This thing’s gonna change everything. Farmers in Michigan? They’ll send wheat to New York like it’s nothing. A guy in Albany will eat bread from Ohio. The whole country moves because of this canal.”

Al scoffed. “You been reading those newspapers again?”

Jamie grinned. “I read. You should try it.”

Al jabbed his pickaxe into the dirt. “Yeah, well, I’ll read when it starts paying.”

Jamie nodded, but his thoughts were still racing ahead—west, east, the land shifting under his feet, all of it in motion. The canal would carve through this wilderness, shaping towns, economies, fortunes. For now, though, there was work to do. He adjusted his grip on the mule’s lead and trudged forward, the sound of pickaxes ringing in the summer heat.

Now, my eyes are back on the candy store, Chat is explaining. “Let’s leave the Erie Canal now. However, let’s bring with us the thought that Jamie sees beyond the physical—he sees the system emerging, burning brightly.”

I get it. “The Erie Canal wasn’t just a route—it was a game-changer that turned scattered, isolated settlements into a unified system. Similarly, RNA’s emergence allowed chemistry to move beyond isolated reactions and become a self-sustaining process.”

Information as a Selective Advantage

Chat continues, “Information storage and transmission beat all other competitors, giving RNA a long-term advantage over non-replicating molecules.”

“Once this process began, evolution could take hold,” I add. “Each iteration could be slightly better than the last—this was the first step toward natural selection.

Chat brings it back to theory. “In GTESI terms, information is a survival strategy. Once molecules could encode information, their survival no longer depended on random assembly but on selection.”

“Sort of like Lilliputian Land.”

Chat nods. “That’s right. Chemical reactions are fundamentally wasteful—molecules collide in countless ways, most interactions don’t produce anything useful. Intelligence changes this. This is the same reason why blueprints outperform trial-and-error construction.”

Natural Selection Begins

I could see the path from Lilliputian Land to the Story Book Canals. “The moment molecules could store information and self-replicate, evolution was inevitable,” I say. “Small changes—copying errors, mutations—could be tested in real time. If they worked, they stayed. If they didn’t, they vanished.”

Chat is happy. “The first RNA-based systems didn’t need to be perfect, only good enough to outcompete everything else. The rest—biological evolution, DNA, proteins, and the first cells—was just a matter of refinement.”

We continue our walk up Main Street. I think we might snap a picture of ourselves, with the Walt & Mickey statue, “Partners”. There’s a line of picture takers. While we wait, we might as well recap.

Our storytelling scenes are a conceptual cascade, each one mirrors a crucial step in the transition from chemistry to life.

With Richard Feynman & Symmetry, we see that symmetry is the simplest way to generate replication. In physics, symmetry governs fundamental laws, from conservation principles to the structure of space-time. How does this apply to early life? The first self-replicating molecules likely emerged not by accident, but because symmetrical forms are easier to duplicate—a principle we see in crystal growth, wave patterns, and even DNA’s helical structure.

On the Buffalo Trail, we learned that even without conscious design, repeating actions refine systems. Buffalo don’t “plan” their trails—but by sheer repetition, their movements create optimal paths through the landscape.

“Bison Trail,” says Chat.

“Buffalo. My story.”

Chat sighs. “Indigenous peoples followed these trails because they were the best paths—over time, these evolved into trade routes, then railroads, then highways, and finally fiber-optic networks carrying digital information.”

With Sir Elton John and Sir Tim Rice, we gain some insight into how music makes words easier to remember, just like RNA adds structure to chemical information. Tim Rice writes raw information. Elton John adds music that makes the words stick in memory. The melody remains the same, even when the words change when The Lion King went to Broadway and African lyrics were added. Just as music helps ideas persist, RNA helps chemistry persist.

In the story of the Erie Canal, we found that a system needs efficient storage and transmission before it can become complex. The canal revolutionized transport, making large-scale trade possible—a single infrastructure shift enabled massive complexity to emerge (cities, industries, financial networks). The transition from free-floating RNA to organized protocells was like going from random trade routes to a modern economy.

Now, information storage, in the form of RNA, eventually requires a home, protocells. Self-replication was step one, but life needed more. In the end, RNA gave way to DNA because DNA was more stable, allowing greater complexity.

So, symmetry enables replication, patterned systems are easiest to copy. Iteration & optimization refine pathways. Patterns help memory survive—RNA does the same for chemistry. RNA needed a stable “home”—protocells provided it.

In the next chapter of our story, RNA had won the battle for information, but information alone wasn’t enough. For all its advantages, RNA was fragile—vulnerable to degradation, diffusion, and environmental chaos.

How to Hold On

Chat wants to get a word in. “Life needs a boundary—a place where chemistry can stabilize, where reactions can happen predictably, where molecules won’t just scatter into the sea after every replication cycle. This was the next great leap: self-assembling lipid structures, the first micro-environments of stability.”

We are almost ready for our selfie, one more group in front of us.

“The transition was profound, Chat,” I say. “The moment molecules were enclosed, the game changed. Molecules inside protocells could outcompete those left exposed to the elements. Chemistry became biology.”

Chat agrees. “The first molecules had learned to store information. But to become life, they had to learn something just as crucial: how to hold on.”

That is where our story goes next: to the first walls of life itself. The birth of protocells. This leap—the creation of boundaries that protect and sustain complexity—became the blueprint for every resilient system that followed. From the walls of modern cells to the firewalls of artificial intelligence, from the borders of nations to the social structures of civilizations, persistence always begins with a stable interior and a defined edge.

Our turn. We step up for the photo. I raise the iPhone, trying to hold the frame steady, though the light is shifting fast—sunset coming on. Chat stands beside Mickey, shoulder to shoulder, mid-smile. Walt is next to them, frozen in bronze, arm outstretched toward a tomorrow he couldn’t yet name. The frame keeps cropping me out—too close and I blot the light, too far and I vanish into it. I adjust again. Now Walt falls out. Two mortals struggling to fit into a frame built for persistence.

I press the shutter. Click.

A snapshot: the dreamer, the mouse, the model, and me. A little tilted as pictures go, but we’re all there. Yet there’s a strange glow just off the right edge, like the flickering of a fire. The light’s unbalanced.

“Let’s take another,” I say.

“Already did,” says Chat.

“Did you manage to get that flicker of light out of the right edge?”

“It’s an ember,” he says. “I got a little more of it.”

Of course he did.