The First Copy

Among a thousand accidents of chemistry in the dark water, one accident does what none of the others can: it makes a copy of itself. Then the copy makes a copy. It is barely a thing at all — no breath, no hunger — but it carries one instruction, and the instruction is simply: again. Everything that has ever crawled, swum, flown, or read a sentence is descended from that first stubborn again. And we still cannot agree on where the line between chemistry and life is drawn.