No Assembly Required

Upon their first meeting, a sperm and egg fuse into life. The monogamous shell allows only one seed inside, rejecting every other tail-wagging suitor. From this single unit the spirit is born.

God’s hand, coiled into fingers of DNA, pulls the fertilized egg into two cells—then four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two—exponential growth that forms body, movement and consciousness. After the mother cell is cleaved into multicellularism daughter cells migrate outward like the arms of a sea star, following the instructions embedded in the phosphates, sugars and bases. The puzzle of life assembles itself.