In the winter of 1967, a young man heading home by ferry after a long trip meets a girl in blue jeans who tells him to call her Emanon. Over the night's crossing she explains that she carries an unbroken genetic memory reaching back through her maternal line to the origin of life three billion years earlier, including ancestors that were never human. Their conversation about life and that inheritance lingers with him long after she slips away the next morning, leaving only a note.