The Begetters

It was the fifty third sample they’d worked on. There was no doubt. The microscope had picked up order. His assistant had yelled to him. We got something, Reuben! He’d looked down it and then up at the blow-up on the screen. There, amid the chaos of dead cells, the detritus in the bone graveyard of the long-gone, was a pattern, as certain as seaside lights strung along a promenade, so tiny as to make you doubt your senses.