Page 80 of As You Wake, Break the Shell

chemicals. Sound is likewise

not a chemical, but whatever

produced it and whatever

received it . . . well, you get the

idea. And obviously, we’re not

the sort who would be pedantic

about it.

Obviously.

There’s a middleman in all those

examples, and that’s symbolism,

or maybe language. I’m not a

linguist, I can’t split that hair

for you. With genes, though,

there’s no talking or writing,

but there is communicating, in a

sense. When the chemicals in a

gene fall into the right kind of

receptacle, it prompts change,

in a directed fashion. Grow a

leaf. Grow an eye. Grow a limb.

Like a blueprint. Or a recipe,

I guess.

A recipe is more apt, I think.

I’m listening.

Humans have been cultivating

and trading the genes of other

species for tens of thousands

of years, long before we had

any inkling of what a gene was.

We stripped them from pea