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My seas filled up with life.
Simple, microscopic. And then two billion years ago, a creature evolved that could photosynthesize. Cyanobacteria. It made energy from sunlight, with oxygen as waste. This life-form out-multiplied the others. Like a broken toy, like a computer error, it performed the same operation a trillion times, turning my oceans into a factory for oxygen. For the first time, oxygen flooded the atmosphere. It nearly choked me. The other creatures died. The earth cooled, froze. Life almost vanished — but it didn’t. And when life returned, the genius of oxygen inspired new diversity.