For those first beautiful hours, I traced the changes on a physical map of Eros Station. The protomolecule activity began at the shelters that we’d converted to incubators, feeding the smart particles with the radiation that seemed to best drive activity. It spread along the transit tunnels, out to the casino levels, the maintenance tunnels, the docks. It eddied through the caves of Eros like a vast breath, the greatest act of transformation in the history of the human race and the tree of life from which it sprang, and I—along with a handful of others—watched it unfold in an awe that
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