He looked down at his Pasechnik workbook. The drawing of the Chlamydomonas was still there, but it didn't look like a lopsided potato anymore. He picked up his green colored pencil and carefully shaded the chromatophore, adding the two tiny flagella with a steady hand. Underneath, in his best handwriting, he wrote: Algae: The invisible foundation of life.
"Watch the flagella, will you? You almost poked my eye out!"
Once upon a time in a quiet Russian village, a sixth-grader named Artyom sat at his wooden desk, staring at a blank page in his biology workbook. At the top of the page, the header read: . Below it, the week’s topic was printed in bold: Algae .
Suddenly, a tiny, high-pitched voice bubbled up from the page.
The water glass rippled. The emerald light faded. Artyom blinked and found himself back at his desk. The room was quiet again.