The blackness was all around, no shapes could be seen, no colour at all. The viscous darkness surrounded in its entirety. Black reigned absolute. There was nothing else. It was a place where no shadows formed. It was a place of absence, where nothing ended and nothing began. Time could not penetrate. There was no mass, there was no sound – a total lack of substance, quieter than silence. In the absence of noise, there was an imagined sound, a deep resonance.

Far way, deep in the inky darkness something stirred; a small movement in the milky gloom. In its movement there came a glimmer; the start of a chemical reaction, an exothermic birth. It was the beginning of something important. It was inconceivable before, but it now it happened. A spark that ignited an unstoppable chain reaction. The first domino had dropped and the rest had all but to follow. It happened, without consciousness, a consequence without cause. There was no reason for its being. The beginning was the most difficult; the rest is history.