Machine by Peter Adolphsen

AT 7.59 P.M. on the 23rd of June 1975 on 1st South Street in Austin, Texas, a drop of petrol combusted in a car engine. Chance would have it that the burning of this drop of fuel formed the point of intersection for the stories of the two passengers in the car as well as that of the drop itself, which had once more changed state, this time into exhaust fumes.
    Time and space were once curled together to the extent that neither of them existed, but nevertheless, suddenly, somehow, a bubble appeared; an explosion occurred simultaneously everywhere and every single particle of matter separated as the void dispersed them all. As the universe continued to expand, the temperature fell sufficiently for the first elements to be formed, which they swiftly were, and thus set off a chain of metamorphoses which has continued ever since. Consequently it can be argued that all matter has always been in existence, although in variousstates and degrees of organisation, and has on a cosmic scale always amounted to the same quantity; nothing can be added and nothing can be subtracted. The universe is in possession of such immense quantities of matter, space and time that it is possible, through changes caused by changes, to try out endless combinations resulting in the present huge number of structures ranging from amino acids to galaxy clusters. The story of a speck of matter is thus the story of these spontaneous structures and their altered states. The tiny element of matter which concerns us has, like everything else, existed since the Big Bang, as it is known; however, the point in time when this drop of petrol existed in its highest degree of concentration, when it entered into its most refined structure, was here on this planet fifty-five million years ago, during the early Eocene when its constituents still formed the rapidly beating heart of a small prehistoric horse. After combusting on the 23rd of June 1975, the drop acquired its most unstructured state in the form of exhaust fumes, yet managed nevertheless in this state, twenty-four hours later, to bring about a structure both complex and chaotic: cancer. I know this because I was eavesdropping from the neighbouring balcony as she inhaled theparticles which triggered the pathological cell division. However, we are getting ahead of ourselves now; let us begin with the prehistoric horse.
    At the end of a long hot day mist was rising from the surface of the lake. The little herd had moved down to the shore and our horse, the one with the heart in question, a five-year-old mare, could feel her fear of crocodiles constricting her throat. She wedged herself in between two of the other horses and stuck her muzzle out across the fragmented mirror surface; she secured her footing and drank, with a sigh, at last.
    The animal was a mammal of the Perissodactyla order, the Equidae family, best known as
Eohippus
, the dawn horse, as it was named by Othniel C. Marsh in 1876; however, as Richard Owen had already in 1841 named a certain fossil
Hyracotherium
, the rules of taxonomy dictated that this term was the correct one. Owen had missed the link with the domestic horse and believed that the animal was related to the shrewmouse, the Latin name for which is
Hyrax
. Common aesthetic sense has since ensured that this name, both prettier and more appropriate, is most frequently used, usually listed first, or if not, thenfollowing in brackets.
Eohippus
is often compared to a fox terrier, partly because they are similar in size, but also because the point of this breed was to create a dog in the image of a horse. During a hunt the terrier sits on the saddle and it was considered tasteful if the rider/dog owner had a small simulacrum of his own horse that could continue the hunt underground. At dog shows it was therefore regarded as a plus if a dog’s coat had markings in the shape of a saddle.
    Our five-year-old mare in the early Eocene, whose coat was a speckled grey-brown, felt a sudden surge of