There was a triangular pack or trinity of stray dogs listlessly wiping snouts in whatever might possibly be edible as they interweaved around pedestrians' feet. Even the sniffing of its members was listless. A foot kicked one dog and there was a high-pitched breathless squeal that was scarcely audible. The dog pushed its weight and movement toward its right side the way a boy might sink into genuflection when the wind is knocked out of him and then it slunk off the sidewalk. Motionless for a moment while still standing, it then opted for movement although it could only stagger. It was not alone. A smaller dog from the trinity followed disconcertedly. It too veered in a right curve to the mirage of a refuge on the edge of the road as if it were the mean between two risky states. One hobbling and trying to yelp from a bit of a second wind and the other accustomed to follow that which had secured its sustenance at previous times, they walked together for a minute before being flattened by a truck and swallowed into the pot hole mouth of the pavement. The road, from its swallow, bloated and curved up like a hill before its true form materialized. Ostensibly, it was a road on an emerging hill but really it was the mutant growth of a head and a face. Out of nowhere it inexplicably gained animation and being. It was with life and without purpose. It was naked existence. The road would swallow much more again and again, get bigger, replicate more of itself, and die. "Mutations of the carbon of the planet are everywhere! I see it now: species are cells mutating over time; planets are clusters of cells; the galaxies are mere organs; and the universe is an organism. Individuals play their parts, thinking themselves autonomous as does any nucleus of a cell, but it isn't true." These were her thoughts as she opened her eyes.