The Cobra Event

by Richard Preston

It was Charles Darwin who first understood that evolution is caused by natural selection, and that natural selection is death. He also understood that vast amounts of death (vast amounts of natural selection) are required to effect a small permanent change in the shape or behavior of an organism. Without huge amounts of death, organisms do not change over time. Without death, life would never have become more complex than the simplest self-copying molecules. The arms of a starfish could not have happened without countless repetitions of death. Death is the mother of structure. It took four billion years of death—a third of the age of the universe—for death to invent the human mind. Given another four billion years of death, or perhaps a hundred billion years of death, who can say that death will not create a mind so effective and subtle that it will reverse the fate of the universe and become God? The smell in the Manhattan morgue is not the smell of death; it is the smell of life changing its form. It is evidence that life is indestructible.

We’ll get a medical team to work you up.” He looked startled. “But it’s probably nothing,” she said. “I really don’t want to go to the hospital. I feel okay.” “If you don’t mind—may I just look at your tongue?” She didn’t have a tongue depressor. But she reached into her knapsack, felt around, and found a small case. From it she removed a penlight. She switched it on and asked him to say “ah.” “Ahhh.” “Well, your tonsils are a little reddened. It looks like you have a cold,” she said.

“Could I—I’m sorry—could I just look at your eyes?” He was reluctant. He seemed very nervous now. She went around the room, closing the venetian blinds. Then she did what was called a swinging flashlight test. She pointed the beam of light first into one pupil and then into the other. The color of the irises seemed completely normal. He had deep brown eyes.