"Changing."(Kevin Hughes) He was an old Chemistry Teacher. So old that he remembered when the word: “Atom", explained it all. Then electron orbitals circling a nucleus proved that Atoms weren’t the smallest thing in the world. Atoms could be divided into: protons, neutrons, and electrons.
Then- in the middle of his career- quarks were discovered. They even knew which quarks made stuff like people, rocks and well…everything.
Now, in his very old age, even the word “particle” had lost any real meaning.
A cloud of probability arising out of the mist of a Field of some sort - was currently thought to be what everything was made of.

He was old now, the progression of knowledge was slowing to a halt. He spent more of his day now looking for his glasses, stepping back out memories of the past to wonder where today went.

A tear formed on his cheek. He reached up to touch it. It was wet.
He chuckled softly to himself:

“Wet, eh? Took me long enough to figure out how amazing “wet” is.”

The old man had enough Chemistry, Math, and Physics under his belt to safely discuss quantum mechanics, astrophysics, or even Life.

But it was wetness that finally opened the door to understanding. Wetness. Water. So common we forget how uncommon it is.

He chuckled again. Remembering how, after all his years of school. All his hours in the Lab. All the discussions over a beer with people smarter than he was. Even a few conversations that took place under the influence of distinct smelling herbs. And once, just once, under the powerful assault on his brain from mushrooms.

How all of that was not enough to shock him into understanding wetness.

Another tear fell. He touched it, let it bead on his finger, held it up close to his glasses and stared at it. Awe seeping out of every ounce of his being. Wet. Water. Wow.

His thoughts became rapid fire lists of the properties of elements. Hydrogen is not wet. Oxygen is not wet. In fact, in their liquid forms, they are…without any braggadocio- rocket fuel.

Even the famous compound that even grade school kids recognize: H20, is not wet. Nope. That molecule is not “wet”. At least not until enough of them are together to make the leap to wetness. A single H20 molecule is not wet. Many of them are.

That opened the door for him to understand “emergence”. A strange process that allows things to develop a property that never existed in their basic forms. Hydrogen and Oxygen were never wet. Even when combined in a single molecule, wetness was out of reach. But get enough of those two atoms together…bingo. Water! Wetness.

Another tear fell. He was dying. A smile formed on his face. More tears fell. Tears of understanding. He was not dying. Like wetness, he was emerging.

It took a lifetime for the miracle of death to happen. Wetness is an emergent property of combining two atoms under certain conditions. Life is an emergent property of Hydrogen too. Death is yet another phase.

More tears fell. He realized he wasn’t dying, he was emerging. He was no longer a water filled carbon figurine with delusions of grandeur. He was emerging from the shell of a limited finite lifetime- some new property was being squeezed out of his former body.

It was his soul.

An emergent property of a living thing. As he looked down at his former body, a mere artifact no more complicated than a caterpillar forming a chrysalis (another chuckle as he remembered thinking how complicated that process was, for such a simple thing- changing from one form to another).

A caterpillar knows it has a future. Not consciously, at least not as we know consciousness. But it knows it has to spin a cocoon…so it does. And in that cocoon it becomes a liquid. Out of that liquid comes a butterfly. A creature that doesn’t crawl around, but flies into the air. A new perspective, vantage point... and body. It emerged from the cocoon…leaving its past behind.

As the last of his soul was squeezed out of his body, he was no longer bound to the earth. Water had done its job. Allowing him to emerge from wetness to this new state of being.

Like the butterfly, he didn’t look back. There was no need. That part of the cycle was over. Joy overtook him. He thought he had understood chemistry. Now…he was chemistry.

The wet world he left behind. Wetness was a property of the physical world. It evaporated in this new world.

His soul soared towards that next phase of being, joining a flock of other souls. All headed to a place instinct drove them too.

No physical limitations, emotions, or the frailty of a worn, broken, and well used body to hold him back.

He emerged into what used to be a void. Thoughts wide with wonder, since eyes were no longer necessary.

In another part of the Universe, hydrogen was emerging from a hot dense plasma. He could see as he flew by, that someday it would become ‘wet.”

He chuckled to himself. Then it dawned on him. He wasn’t a person anymore. A “he" anymore. Or a name. He had emerged from labels. Now, he just was.

And is.

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