In Ascension

by Martin MacInnes

‘The cell is basically an ocean capsule. A preserved primordial capsule, holding the original marine environment inside.

you couldn’t learn anything radically new, rate of progress capped from the start by inertia, inability to recognise anything past the limits of present imagination.

Life as a marginal transition from mineral into biotic, then back again, repeating over billions of years,

A thought travels 120 metres per second, and it isn’t enough.

And what is a body, in the loosest terms, but a set of agreements among matter and energy that endures for a period and exhibits a metabolic response?

We looked at the various stages of the journey and identified possible lulls, inserting small ‘festival’ food bounties to break up the tedium.

If I can’t imagine what that world was like, it never existed.