Mikhail Bulgakov. The Fateful Eggs -
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the tiny point of a needle, say.
Thus, as ill luck would have it, this ray attracted the attention of
the great man's experienced eye for several seconds.
In it, the ray, the Professor detected something a thousand
times more significant and important than the ray itself, that
precarious offspring accidentally engendered by the movement of a microscope
mirror and lens. Due to the assistant calling the Professor away, some
amoebas had been subject to the action of the ray for an hour-and-a-half and
this is what had happened: whereas the blobs of amoebas on the plate outside
the ray simply lay there limp and helpless, some very strange phenomena were
taking place on the spot over which the sharp red sword was poised. This
strip of red was teeming with life. The old amoebas were forming pseudopodia
in a desperate effort to reach the red strip, and when they did they came to
life, as if by magic. Some force seemed to breathe life into them. They
flocked there, fighting one another for a place in the ray, where the most
frantic (there was no other word for it) reproduction was taking place. In
defiance of all the laws which Persikov knew like the back of his hand, they
gemmated before his eyes with lightning speed. They split into two in the
ray, and each of the parts became a new, fresh organism in a couple of
seconds. In another second or two these organisms grew to maturity and
produced a new generation in their turn. There was soon no room at all in
the red strip or on the plate, and inevitably a bitter struggle broke out.
The newly born amoebas tore one another to pieces and gobbled the pieces up.
Among the newly born lay the corpses of those who had perished in the fight
for survival. It was the best and strongest who won. And they were
terrifying. Firstly, they were about twice the size of ordinary amoebas and,