Life, then, springs from disorder as a means of efficiently routing environmental energy, explaining its resilience: life goes with the flow where technology seeks to stem the tide. Thus, the natural thrives where the artificial is eroded—a judo-like trick of redirecting the force of the attacker. Among its strategies, a story replayed again and again is that of merging, of creating greater complexity by the suitable arrangement of simpler building blocks. But still, as greatly complicated assemblies of trillions of cells, both of our own genetic lineage and of countless symbiotic bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms, we remain individuals, clearly distinct from one another. The merging of the streams of life only seems to go so far.