In Stage One, Mentifex and others suggest that biological life started from a two-dimensional film of amino acids in a tidal pool. With evaporation and concentration, myriad combinations of not-yet-living molecules could flap around and form complex structures akin to rudimentary living cells. If one structure replicates itself by bonding endlessly with similar or identical structures but is not yet living, the stage is set for lightning to strike the primordial soup and break off molecular clusters that float about freely and attract replicator material in such a way that each cluster elongates itself to a certain point and then breaks apart into "offspring" clusters in what we might call Stage Two of evolution.
In Stage Two the amino clusters are not yet replicating genetically. They are simply growing longitudinally to a point where they break apart but continue replicating.
In Stage Three, a strip on the elongated surface bonds with amniotic chemicals which toggle under sunlight between two pulsing states which cause locomotion of the parent clusters and therefore also of the child clusters.
In Stage Four, moving clusters which chance to become longitudinally hollow replicate faster than the merely solid clusters, and soon the hollow beasties, still self-replicating by splitting apart, consume all the resources in each tidal pool.
In Stage Five, some of the locomotive hollow clusters mutate at the forward-moving end into a primordial mouth structure and at each "caboose" end by default into a primordial anus structure. As the little beasties move about in the tidal pool, the mouth orifice swallows quasi-nutrients that make the longitudinal cluster not only grow fatter but also replicate as fatter beasties when they break apart. Thus we see larger and larger beasties filling the tidal pool.
In Stage Six, a filament of non-identical amino acids -- some combination of adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine -- chances to form longitudinally in each beastie in such a way that the breaking of the chain causes two different kinds of child beasties to result from each successive splitting, since the rupture will not always occur between the same two amino acids, and each terminal amino acid will bond differently with nearby molecules, causing diversity to evolve among the child beasties. The same genetic chain of amino acids remains in each child beastie, but a kind of molecular counter stipulates that different kinds of beasties will result after a certain number of splittings apart and only a maximum number of splittings will be permitted as governed by the primordial equivalent of telomeres.
In Stage Seven, different kinds of child beasties will adhere or tend to stick together in a conglomerate or globule of beasties which all contain the same genetic filament of amino acids, but which form a globule or primordial organism that survives and replicates only if the constituent child-cells cooperate beneficially for the survival of the fittest organisms.
