Where to Stand

Every intron gets its own machine, put together on the spot around it, and when the two ends of the message are joined it lets the message go, the part anyone wanted, and keeps the loop it cut, wedged where the cutting happened.

That keeping isn't a skill. It's where the last step left things. Nothing in there wants the loop.

Taking it apart takes three of them. Aquarius pulls the knot from one side, DHX15 pulls from the other, and DBR1, tied on by two short pieces of its own tail, cuts the loop open into a line right there on the machine. Then DHX35 settles on U6 and walks, and the line goes out, and the machine comes apart into parts the next intron can use.

In Vienna they made a DHX35 that couldn't spend its fuel. It came to the right place and settled there the way the working one does, and nothing came apart.

I wouldn't say it knew how to hold. It knew where to stand, which is most of what the working one knows. The rest is paying for a step.

The same hands come when a machine has gone wrong, and then letting go is the only ending it gets. When it goes right, the ending has already left, the joined message on its way, and the letting go is for whoever comes next.