The shore of a Paleozoic sea. Warm sun. Meandering stream across vast salty mudflats. Dreamy white clouds. The moon is much closer. No jet contrails, no plastic bags. Small sticks washed down from the hills by a river rot in the warm sandy mud. No insects. No fish. Deep-breathing exercises mandatory(oxygen is at 10 per-cent of current levels). Unimaginably still except for the breeze. Quiet genetic mutations over two hundred million years.

There, the first flower.