You were looking at all the caterpillars when your father told you that scientists believe a caterpillar gets a new soul when it becomes a butterfly. Worms too, you said, every morning when a worm rouses itself it has a new soul. The caterpillars you were looking at had very smooth skin. You wondered briefly if they were really caterpillars at all. That was when you were trying to make a liquor glass with clay. Someone else was making a great water jug, but you only wanted to make a small liquor glass. The clay wouldn't be shaped right (the clay was working against you), so you got frustrated and gave up. You wondered for a second why scientists believed caterpillars get a new soul when they turn to butterflies if scientists also believed there was no such thing as a soul. You asked your father about it and he said something about memory and consciousness, but it still seemed absurd to you. You looked again at the caterpillars, crawling about in a pile of dirt, writhing. "I don't think those are really caterpillars," you said. They looked very yellow.