Run It Again

Pasteur sorted crystals with tweezers by the way they leaned. Two small heaps. The bacteria ate the kind from grapes. The mirror kind sat in the dish, untouched.

After that, for decades, the flasks came out even. Whatever went in, both hands came out, half and half, and the light went through not bent at all.

Kagan, in 1986, thought about the metal, how it held two at a time: right with right, left with left, and the third thing, right with left, the slow one. It held things up, so whichever side had a little more got more.

Soai found the one that makes itself. Start it from nothing tilted. In the first moment chance sets down a few more of one hand than the other, and that hand makes its own hand, and that one makes its own, till it is nearly all there is.

Then he ran it again, and the other hand won.