The applause was meagre, but there.

Dr. Westway stated, “I might as well make it clear, this class has nothing to do with belief in God. You are all free to believe or not to believe in whoever or whatever you want, I don’t give a damn. This class is about a book, some parts are magnificent, others are trashy literature, blatant propaganda, some of the ideas hold true today, others are long outdated, some of the authors had talent, others stank. If anyone has a problem with that, he or she is free to withdraw. Drop/adds are until Wednesday. No one’ll ever know you were here.”

As I walked out the door, I stumbled.

I turned the knob quietly and before I even stepped in, found myself the concern of an entire population of faces.

“You must be Lester, Kate. There’s one seat left over there.”

My neck sank into my shoulders as if a meek bearing could quiet the sound of my steps. Professor Ranji scratched the formula of an amino acid onto the chalkboard. He looked at me peculiarly before writing GLUTAMINE. He added glutamine onto leucine, proline onto serine, valine onto tryptophan. The amino acids linked like chains.

Dark hairs covered Professor Ranji’s knuckles. Like air plants, hair trailed out of his ears and nose. His eyes, dark and a trifle protruding, were protected by thick brows. His untidy beard framed teeth as white as any sun-bleached clam shell, and so straight, they seemed filed that way.

Professor Ranji began his lecture, “There was no life whatsoever on the young earth; for over a billion years, it was covered with boiling water, you can imagine the steamy vapours, the moist heat … but no life … no life whatsoever …”

He continued, “The early conditions of the earth can be simulated in the laboratory, hydrogen, water vapour, methane, ammonia, heat and electrical discharges break the gas molecules down and they re-form in these very organic molecules we have been talking about. Scientists call this period on earth, lasting a few billions years, primordial soup, oh, just fancy jargon for chicken broth, you know, water, amino acids, simple proteins, harbingers of the first living cells … Um, yes, Kate?”

“You mean to tell me that the origin of life is the birth of protein?! The miracle of life is but a fatty acid? The first living organism but a simple cell already concerned with assimilation?”

Professor Ranji smiled. “The living and the non-living are made up of the same elements, so to speak. One of the characteristics that separate the living from the non-living is the capacity to steal energy from the environment and transform it to its own use.”

I clamped my arms between my knees so they would not be seen shaking.

“Then the definition of life is: an edible, that eats?”

“Depends on what you mean by eat. All forms of life do not have mouths. Autotrophs steal their energy from the sun, you know, photosynthesis. You and I can’t do that. Edible for some doesn’t mean edible for others, look at the detrivores, you know, worms, maggots, vultures, hyenas, it seems they steal the scraps no one else wants.”