Ah, that was really useful. Sunlight contains energy, and the early Earth atmosphere contains huge amounts of carbon dioxide. You can use the sun’s rays to remove the oxygen from carbon dioxide. This stores energy, which you can have back by oxidising the carbon again.
There’s no competition for the sun’s rays, so long as you stay in the light you are good to go.
But all this free food is making you a tasty target for various eukaryotes[1], which are swimming right up to you, engulfing you, and eating you whole! This is bad! These guys are a lot tougher than you. Well, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, right? With a bit of luck, one of these eukaryotic bad boys will engulf you, but then keep you around inside so that you can eat sunlight and make food It’s basically the evolutionary equivalent of the Mafia.
So, whaddya gonna do, tough guy? You got a nice little cell here, be a pity if something happened to it..
[1] Don’t know what a eukaryote is? You’ll have to go back to the beginning of life and try some different evolutions! But for now, I’ll tell you: it’s a bigger, tougher, and above all hungrier single celled organism, and it wants to eat you.
