Not long ago, there was this important physicist who wrote about how
life probably got started away back when the Earth was just forming.
He argued that special creation was more or less a lot of hogwash, and
that what actually took place was that as the Earth cooled, all the
hot chemicals mixing around sort of stumbled onto a combination or two
that took on the first characteristics of life.

In other words, this guy left off where Mr. Darwin began his theory of
evolution.

Now me, I don't know. Lottie makes me go to church with the kids every
Sunday and I like it. If this chemical theory about life getting
started is right--well, then, a lot of people got the wrong idea about
things, I always figured.

But how would I or this physicist explain this quivering mess of
protoplasm I got on my hands by accident this particular Friday night?

I experimented some more. I got out the kids' junior encyclopedia and
looked up some things I'd forgot, and some I had never learned in the
first place.

* * * * *

So it got to be Saturday morning. Fred and Claude phoned about the
fishing trip and I made an excuse. No one else bothered me. All day
Saturday, I studied. And all Saturday night and Sunday. But I couldn't
figure out any sensible answers that would make peace with my
minister.

It looked like I had created some form of life. Either that or some
life-form in the stove oil that had been asleep a billion years had
suddenly found a condition to its liking and had decided to give up
hibernating in favor of reproduction.

What drove me on was the thought that I must have something here that
was commercially important--a new culture of something that would
revolutionize some branch of chemistry or biology. I wouldn't even
stop to fry an egg. I chewed up some crackers and drank a few more
bottles of beer when my stomach got too noisy. I wasn't sleepy,
although my eyes felt like they were pushed four inches into my skull.

Junior's little chemistry set didn't tell me very much when I made the
few tests I knew how. Litmus paper remained either red or blue when
stuck into the jelly. This surprised me a little because this whole
mass of de-sudsed washing compound mixture had started out with a
pretty good shot of lye in it.

So my notes grew, but my useful information didn't. By midnight
Sunday, it appeared that my jelly invention had only one important
talent: The ability to drink endlessly