Long ago, before there was an Earth or a moon or a sun or the stars that we know, there was only energy and matter and time, and spirits. There was no life, at least as we know it---but we'll come back to that.

    There were basically two kinds of spirits. We'll call one of them Entropians, although they wouldn't have given themselves a name or even thought of themselves as a group. The Entropians were nomads, wandering and only occasionally congregating, and then not for long. Their clothing was loose and flowed like the wind, and if you had looked in their faces, you might not have seen anything at all. They lived in tents of all sorts of shapes, and the shapes of those changed all the time too.

    If you could have visited those Entropian homes, you would have found all the simple furniture slowly moving and changing shape - it would have been disorienting, but it also would have been peaceful and dreamlike. If you could have seen the art on their walls, it would have been in pastels with only occasional splotches of bright color, because the Entropians found concentrations of color as jarring as they found concentrations of their own people. Their art was beautiful and mesmerizing, as the colors slowly blended and shifted, and then it would disappear, and a new art form would swirl into existence somewhere else. Their world was like a Salvador Dali painting gone wild.

    The other kind of sprits were the Orthonians. The Orthonians lived in permanent cities with very regular street systems, and the streets all led to the city centers. Their houses were all very symmetrical, so that the windows and doors on one side matched the other side. The houses were arranged in blocks that were identical in rings around the city center, so that you could tell how far you were from the center just by looking at the streets and houses. From above, the city was a pinwheel of dazzlingly symmetrical geometry. The Orthonian world was like the anal-compulsive ward of a German hospital - with Swiss nurses.

    If you had gone into the Orthonians' houses, you would have found everything very clean and organized. Everything in their homes had an exact place, and nothing ever was moved because it was already in the right place. The artworks on their walls were mosaics with very intricate geometrical patterns that were repeated almost infinitely, and the colors were bright and distinct. It was, needless to say, very different from an Entropian home.

    The Entropians and Orthonians usually got along peacefully, but they didn't mix much. Each group sent an ambassador to live with the other, but the ambassadors were never happy. The Orthonian ambassador could never be out among the Entropians long without getting dizzy from the constantly shifting surroundings, and so he stayed in his very orderly compound. The Entropian ambassador had just the opposite problem, because she or he (it always changed) felt so constrained among the rigidly organized Orthonians, and so she or he usually stayed in a capsule of flowing Entropian space.

    The Orthonian spirits would have been happy with the universe beyond their cities, except for one problem: The Entropians had gotten to the Universe first, and they had set it up according to their own Entropian rules, or lack of rules. Matter and time and energy flowed like winds through the universe, never stopping anywhere for long and never taking any organized form. Time ran backwards here and forwards there. Streams of matter swooshed through space in one quadrant and then disappeared, only to reappear in two or three others - but perhaps earlier, or perhaps later. All this distressed the Orthonians, who wished the universe could be orderly, like their cities and homes.

     The Orthonians decided that they wanted to organize time, so that it would flow in just one direction. There would be a past, and there would be a present, and there would be a future, and everything could be categorized that way. Before they took action, they conferred with the Entropian ambassador, but he just gave them a bemused look and wished them well, because the whole idea seemed impossible to her. The Orthonians nonetheless went forward with their plans, and soon they channeled time where they wanted it. There was a present that separated the future from the past, and time became orderly.

    At first the Orthonians were very pleased with their work. Then they noticed something: things they enjoyed disappeared after time passed. Almost as bad, sometimes things that they disliked appeared unexpectedly. On the other hand, things they disliked sometimes disappeared too, at least if they waited long enough, and sometimes things they liked suddenly came into being. Nonetheless, there was much complaining about this new way that the universe was organized, and inquiries were held into the cause. When the Orthonians realized that their own organization of time had doomed many of their favorite things to a past that could no longer be visited, there was great consternation. For a long while, there was an Orthonian taboo against meddling with the nature of the universe. However, the taboo disappeared with time too.

     After enough time passed that the taboo was forgotten, a group of bright young Orthonians proposed that something be done about the way that matter aimlessly flowed through the universe. Their calculations showed that they could make a force called "gravity", which would hold matter together in clumps. In fact, the bigger the clump, the more other matter its gravity could pull to itself, so that little clumps of matter could eventually grow into really big clumps, like planets and stars. It seemed like a great plan: all the Orthonians would have to do was sow the seeds of gravity throughout the Universe, and the rest would take care of itself.

    This time the Entropian ambassador wasn't consulted. No one wanted to go to the bizarre formless compound where she lived, but that wasn't the only reason. The Orthonians knew that the Entropians wouldn't be happy with matter clustered together in permanent locations. Why ask for the advice of someone who will be disapproving? Anyway, why ask messy people like the Entropians for advice about organizing anything?

     The Orthonians sent their young knights out to strew gravity across space, and then they watched to see what happened. Everything went well at first. Just as planned, clumps of matter began to form, and slowly the bigger clumps began to suck in the smaller clumps to make matter more and more concentrated in certain spots. Planets and stars and galaxies began to form. The Orthonians were jubilant with what they had done, and medals were given to the bright young Orthonians who had come up with the idea.

    Then someone noticed an unanticipated problem. Just a few huge balls of matter were continuing to grow, as they sucked in more and more of the matter of the universe. Whole planets, and even the stars of which the Orthonians had been so proud, were sucked into the huge masses, and the huge masses even consumed each other. This went on and on, to the Orthonians' horror, until finally there was just one huge mass that collapsed in on itself. All the matter of the universe was disappearing!

     The collapsing mass shrank and shrank until it was so dense that it shook, and finally it exploded. Matter went flying everywhere in millions and millions of pieces. Slowly pieces of it began to stick together, and those pieces stuck together, and so little planet-sized chunks began to form. It looked like the universe might return to normal, but before long the Orthonians realized that the universe was just repeating itself again. Sure enough, the clumps grew bigger and bigger, and began to consume whole planets, and all the matter once again was sucked into one huge mass. By now the Orthonians realized that they had made a mistake, and they wanted to go back in time and to change the gravity they had made. However, as they studied time and how they had made it flow, they realized they couldn't go back. Because of their two clever inventions, the universe was doomed to suck itself together in a collapsing mass, to explode, and then to do it all over again - again and again.

    By this time, most Orthonians were ready to quit tinkering with the universe and to leave well enough alone. Certainly there wouldn't be any more huge projects to organize the entire universe. A few Orthonians, however, thought a much smaller-scale plan could make things better.

    Matter had always just been matter - there were no different kinds of matter. The new proposal was to take little bits of matter - just the tiniest specks - and put them together to make more. To show what could be done, some Orthonians took a proton and an electron and made a hydrogen atom. It was a new way of organizing matter, where the positive charge of the proton and the negative charge of the electron held the two parts together. Then they took two protons, put them with two neutrons, which had no charge, and added two electrons, and made a helium atom. They could keep making these combinations, they said, and organize matter into the most amazing configurations.

    This kind of organization was just what Orthonians lived for, so the plan was approved and work began. It turned out to be easy to make the hydrogen atoms, and even to combine them into hydrogen molecules. Making helium proved a little more difficult, and making lithium and beryllium and boron and carbon and so on proved to be a lot of work.

    This work went on, even though the production of the bigger, heavier elements went slowly. Eventually, though, even the most optimistic Orthonians became discouraged. Whenever more than about 80 protons and 120 or so neutrons were packed together, the whole mess fell apart, or even blew up. These big bundles could only be kept together for just a little while, which offended the Orthonians' sense of permanence. Worse, there seemed to be a limit beyond which bigger bundles just couldn't be built, which offended the Orthonians' sense of order too. It was like trying to build a house of cards ten feet tall.

    Eventually the Orthonians got fed up. The expense of making anything but hydrogen was draining the public coffers, and there was just no headway with the really big elements. Eventually the whole project was terminated, the factories were shut down and dismantled, and the universe was left with lots of hydrogen and progressively less of the heavier and heavier elements. It hadn't been a fiasco like the time business, or an embarrassment like the gravity plan to organize the universe. Nonetheless, the effort to organize matter certainly never accomplished the order and organization that the Orthonians envisioned when they started on it.

    Some of the Orthonian research on the elements had shown that atoms could be put together in arrays or structures with very regular order. For example, hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms could be put together to make crystals called "ice", where the atoms were arranged in almost infinite regular patterns. This kind of order delighted the Orthonians, and it didn't require any new atoms. Everyone had been fed up with the atom-making boondoggle, but this was going to be great.

     The Orthonians decided to make lots of these crystal structures and to spread them through the universe. This would be the ultimate artwork of their civilization. Great pride and effort went into the work, first on simple crystals like sodium chloride and then on more and more complex structures with many different kinds of symmetry.

    Finally the time came to spread these gems across the universe. As the Orthonians traveled along setting out their masterworks, they were horrified to find that most of their treasures changed, or just evaporated into the vastness of space. None of the Orthonians had realized that space varied in its characteristics in ways that would make their crystals unstable. For example, as billions of ice crystals were set out to decorate the cosmos, they almost all turned to liquid or just wafted away as vapor. Years and years of work disappeared in seconds as matter changed phases and as crystal structures rearranged themselves however they liked.

     The Orthonians were furious, and hearings and inquires were held to find out what had gone wrong. Finally a blue ribbon panel found the reason: the Entropians had let temperature and pressure vary so much across the universe, back when they first found it, that a form of matter stable in one place (like an ice crystal in the cold) might be completely unstable somewhere else (and become water or vapor).

     As Orthonian anger grew, the Entropians were increasingly held up as scapegoats for a sloppy universe. Their aimless ways had led to the crystal structure disaster - everyone knew that. Orthonian research now showed that the Entropian disorder had also fatally hampered the earlier effort to make bigger and better atoms. The Orthonian ambassador was recalled, and the Entropian ambassador was expelled and sent home (somewhat to her relief). The Orthonians set their best young minds to the task of finding a way to overcome the Entropians. The Entropians, on the other hand, hardly took note, and they continued their tranquil, formless, wandering lives.

    When the Orthonians finally devised their next scheme to organize the messy universe left by the Entropians, their tool was a novel one. Rather than organize everything themselves, which had been lots of work, they would make small units of matter designed to make more of the same units. Thus the number of units could increase without limit, until all matter was used and all energy was stored. As a clever twist, these little units of matter were designed to not replicate themselves perfectly. This meant that many would be defective and fail, but also that some new ones would actually be more efficient, and perhaps even more complex, than their predecessors. With enough time, these replicating units of matter would make increasingly complex units, which could move more matter around and arrange it in more organized ways.

     It was a great idea. The Orthonians wouldn't have to do all the work. In fact, it was a grand pyramid scheme: from one or two simple prototypes, they would eventually have billions and billions of complex units working to assimilate and move matter. They decided to call these units "organisms". The whole project was called the "Labor-saving Invention to Finish off the Entropians", or "Life".

     The plan began to work, but as usual there were problems. Freshly generated life could sustain itself and replicate itself, and so the project moved forward. However, as units of life got older, disorder developed in their internal structures, and eventually they would cease to work. Once again, Entropian disorder was blamed as busy Orthonian creations lapsed back into the tranquillity of Entropian existence - or nonexistence.

     Despite the loss of individual units of life, the project progressed. Whole new forms of life developed, and these new forms had capabilities far beyond that of the prototypes. For example, on the planet called Earth, the Orthonians had only seeded the oceans with very simple life units. However, eventually there were large units capable of self-support, of independent movement, and even of activity on land.

     This is not to say that there weren't setbacks. Occasionally, a form of life would fail to replicate and, as the last of its units expired, that form of life disappeared forever. This usually wasn't a big deal, unless several forms were lost at once. In fact, sometimes old kinds of life were lost simply because the new ones were even better at organizing energy and matter.

     Orthonian pride in their success was great. The crowning glory seemed at hand when life units reached huge sizes and not only traversed all the land but also flew through the air. That crowning glory soon met with disaster, however, when a huge chunk of matter smacked into Earth. The collision set off a chain of events that extinguished many of the life forms of which the Orthonians were most proud.

     Orthonian dismay turned to rage when yet another investigation showed that Entropian disorder had once again victimized a grand Orthonian plan. An aimless meteorite with typically Entropian random motion had wandered into Earth's orbit. Once again, Orthonians would have to watch life slowly build as an organizational mechanism to overwhelm Entropian chaos.

     This time, however, a few clever Orthonians decided to stack the deck a little bit. Why not, they decided, implant an intelligence in some life units? Life units had been randomly doing the work of Orthonians by organizing matter, but it would be much grander to have intelligent units that could innovate in the organization process. A rodent-like life form was selected and implanted with primitive intelligence, and the Orthonians sat back to watch life take its course.

     It took a while, but eventually the life forms with intelligence developed to where they indeed began to organize their world, just as the Orthonians hoped. These life forms laid out straight roads across their planet. They built fences and walls to separate clearings from forests, and they dug canals and built dikes to separate swamps into sea and dry land - always organizing. They took fire, a great randomizer of matter, and used it to funnel and organize energy - and the Orthonians were delighted. They dug mines to recover and concentrate the ores previously scattered through the earth. They even organized themselves in cities and with governments, and soon they organized the cities and nations into empires. The Orthonians loved it.

     And so here we are. These new life forms have organized everything: academicians have organized knowledge, engineers and architects have organized matter and energy, politicians and churchmen have organized behavior. They've even brought order to their disorganization, creating highly organized armies to kill each other and destroy each other's civilizations. They're so ambitious with their organizing that they imagine exploring space and organizing the Orthonians' other life forms into federations or galactic empires. Recently, they have actually begun to engineer new life forms, working on the organization of life in ways that even the Orthonians weren't willing to take on.

     Someday these life forms may even find the Orthonians and try to subjugate them as well. Then the story will come full circle. The only questions will be whether the ever-organizing life forms even recognize their Orthonian creators, and whether the Orthonians will flee to escape domination by their creation.

    And the Entropians will live on, tranquil and oblivious to it all. They didn't create time, but it's on their side.

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