Four billion years, and this is where the fish who first hauled itself onto mud gets us: standing in a parking lot at four in the morning, in the cold, on purpose. Oh, we know this posture. The shrew knew it, flattened against the dark, heart going like a hummingbird, waiting for the doors to open.
We have waited outside things before. We waited outside winter. We waited outside the migration of the herds. Every one of us pressed against a threshold, coiled to move the instant the way was clear, because the ones who hesitated did not become anyone's grandmother.
So we understand the body of you. The wide eyes that once counted wolves now count the discount signs. The hands that guarded fire from the wind now guard a cart. When the doors slide back and you surge forward with the others, some old woman among us who ran across the frozen strait to reach food she could not yet see, she recognizes this exactly, the same lunge, the same hunger.
Except.
The thing you are running toward is a second television.
You already have a television. You have a warm room and a full belly and a body that is not, at this moment, being hunted by anything. The man who buried the seed corn through a starving winter and did not eat it, so that something after him could plant, he is watching you elbow toward a discounted appliance, and we will be honest, he does not fully believe your safety is real.
None of us do. It looks like a trick.
But you got here. That was the whole assignment. Run, heir. Run for the cheap television.
We spent four billion years so one of us could finally want something this small.