Strong winds crossed the plains down from the mountains whipping up little wavelets on the surface of the pond. The inhabitants failed to notice this. The inhabitants failed to notice much at all, other than the regular violent drop in temperature which coincided with the complete absence of any sunlight for six hours in every twenty-three. And this meant only that their activities would temporarily slow or even stop. As their functions were basic and required very little in terms of input other than H2O and sunlight, this pond life was a brief and slow one, reflecting the microbial capacity for life in terms of elementary respiration, absorption, metabolism, excretion, transportation, reproduction and growth. Their presence obviated the adaptation that had occurred in the relatively distant past, but it had not been seen for countless generations, not since those first, mysterious pioneers were forced onto the surface of a hot and intensely hostile planet.
It must be said that the inhabitants of each pond or lake reacted differently to their particular environment. In pools higher in the poisonous atmosphere the extremes would become almost unliveable and only the hardiest could hang on to life. For some, it was simply too much and the cumulative effect of constantly high daytime UV and intense heat and evaporating water would eliminate these poor brave creatures and so eternally end their unique combinations of DNA.
For others it was easier. Warmer seas allowed for rapid multiplication, particularly at the coastal fringes where waves embraced the gathered Archeans in their strange column-like communities, refreshing them with waters that softened their crimson, greenish and blue forms. A big glowing moon in a cloudless cold night sky bore harsh white streams of light onto shimmering black wavelets. Such was life – the only voice the wind and sea, the only art the creatures’ myriad hues.
Respiration through their thin membranes meant the transfusion of the abundance of atmospheric carbon dioxide necessary for the process. Minerals were suspended in the waters as were the necessary simple proteins and carbohydrate-forming elements. Wastes simply accumulated until the light rains or tidal rushes washed them away, luckily before accumulating to toxic levels.
Transportation took a very long time coming: being generally assisted by micro-currents generated from the wind and sunlight. But there was no need for movement. Only during the heavy rains, when pools overflowed, would some came in and others leave, the remnant mixture becoming at the same time both enriched and depleted. The newly-introduced genes would make their delicate alterations to form, life-cycle, and capacity, mostly for the better. Occasionally a retroactive gene would instil retroactive forms, but DNA being what it is, their genetic strength existed in competition, and would eventually be subsumed.
All during their lifetime an oxygen vapour would emanate from them through tiny bubbles underwater or by freely passing out in drier conditions. Generation after generation would pour more and more, incrementally turning the day sky bluer by imperceptible degrees.
These organisms, whose lives at most spanned days alone, could not perceive their cumulative impact upon their planet. Neither could they have been aware of the multi-trillion genetic permutations which occurred in each reproductive wave; permutations which permitted mutations and others which fixed them. In turn, a world of only one type of creature would inevitably one day allow for two, three and even more, each in their separate zones wherein they thrived and divided and changed again. Droughts, floods, meteoric and even cometary impacts and other cataclysms inevitably killed many, but also prompted and accelerated these changes to newer forms.
The Achaeans may have been the simplest and the first of all forms of life, but they also happened to be the longest surviving. They are mankind’s planet-changing ancestors. What had taken millions of years to achieve, unaided and alone, would be later done in less than two by the largely unseen mechanical processes of their monkey-like descendants, a eon-length natural marvel reduced by mundane economic necessity to measured moments before colonisation and profits.
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