There is a famous tale of a toad, a frail toad inscribed with the wrinkles of seniority. One day, sat on the bank of a pond, it asks evolution, “Why do my back legs bend so? It’s so strange that they fold this way and then that, and one half lays right on top of the other like two jelly strings. Why so?” Evolution does not answer, but instead a noise in a bush startles the toad and it leaps into the pond. From the pond the toad continues, “And why, evolution, do you make me feel pain, feel frost unbearable, feel every prick when a thorn decides to investigate my skin wall? Would not I live a happier, more endurable existence with this pain tuned to nil?” Evolution does not answer, but the toad suddenly feels an alarming sense of warmth all around it and looks to find the water hot and bubbling and coloured in all sorts of something nasty – a geyser! – and it hops back to land.

At 4 am, every day, the tide is at its lowest. Always a few water colonies are left stranded among the sand, a death clock for those unfortunate lifeforms inside. Seumas counts his days in water droplets from the ocean, pipetted into an ornate glass orb with a rubber stopper. Only a hundred droplets, he knows, until the final droplet and the orb is full. One morning he finds a piece of driftwood, one as straight as a steel rod, which fits his grip like it was grown for that purpose. He says, “I shall walk until this stick strikes a rock, then I shall walk no more.” Off he went, and his stick struck plenty: paper bags, bottles of glass (always green), many toes, a heron, sand here and sand there. Everything it struck and hit and whipped and knocked.

But never a rock.

A barnacle, a sea nibbet, or, as they prefer to be called, a wheezing discoid, awoke one morning to find its throat coarse and its fur stiff. It tried to shift itself, test the extent of its discomfort, but it was quick to recall it couldn’t move. It stopped its efforts and looked around with zero pairs of eyes, found nothing, and settled itself exactly where it was. It took a moment and tried to comprehend the enjoyment that other animals found in such a dry existence – such a humping heat that came from that suspended ball of flame. But comprehension was beyond itself, it reminded itself. The ball of flame humped. It was dangerously dry. Hump, hump, each hump lifted more moisture out of the wheezing discoid.

It so happens that the wheezing discoid had a memory capacity of exactly one-hundred-and-seventy English language words, which it used all up to store the tale of the frail toad’s goad with evolution, verbatim. This is an incredible coincidence, given the toad existed on a planet not of this galaxy and of a time before the universe. But the discoid – although not locomotive, nor comprehensive – it was certainly resourceful. Finding such unbelievable knowledge inside itself, the discoid made a decision: it would not assume a state of matter none too dissimilar from a crusty loaf of bread. It called out to evolution, “Evolution! Why did you deprive me of legs to locomote or eyes to look about? I feel dry and light, oh so light, something is wrong and I cannot interpret nor deter it.” Evolution did not answer. “Evolution! Gently, I ask for a simple hinge, attached say on my side. And on that hinge a simple stick so that it may swing this or that way when I squeeze, and along I shuffle so I may find shade.” Evolution did not answer. “Evolution! Let me feel this state I am in. With only a mouth and a hundred teeth I lack the tools to describe what I only can deduce must be a dry agony. Give me pain so I can be alerted early to its coming, so I can make arrangements to get out of pain’s way before – “

And then, possibly the most exciting experience that could happen to a wheezing discoid happened to the wheezing discoid: its entire existence simply ceased.

Seumas found himself, at 4:15 am, on a beach. His stick had hit rock. Hit it hard and fast enough that it felt almost like it had cracked. The tide had only begun its collective effort to siege the upper lands. All his walking, five days of it – he stopped only for a moment to watch a purple butterfly flit flat in catastrophic elegance between two leaves – five days, and his journey was now done. What he couldn’t place was the gloopy, sploochy way the rock had given under his stick. He was tired from five days of struck without strike. He would settle here, by the gloopy, sploochy rock.