Book excerpt: Based on a real scientific event and inspired by a beloved real human in the author's life, this is a story about science and the poetry of existence; about time and chance, genetics and gender, love and death, evolution and infinity -- concepts often too abstract for the human mind to fathom, often more accessible to the young imagination; concepts made fathomable in the concrete, finite life of one tiny, unusual creature dwelling in a pile of compost amid an English garden. Emerging from this singular life is a lyrical universal invitation not to mistake difference for defect and to welcome, across the accordion scales of time and space, diversity as the wellspring of the universe's beauty and resilience.