Look at Each Other

Those above are dead, but those below are still alive. A piece of flint from an Ethiopian volcano crater contains six-fold symmetrical siliceous filaments. Not a fossil, but a relic of another life. Shen Rang took his mentor's coordinates down to the very depths. The transparent tubular body pulsates in the fissure, and dark red ferrous sulfide flows inside. It lived so long that oxygen was once poisonous gas. He looked at it through the eyepiece. It tilted in his direction. Two chemical worlds, two time scales, faced each other in the abyss.