The air was heavy with the sharp smell of old cheese, a smell that penetrates deep into the soul – an aroma that testifies to maturation, to time, to loss. Next to this monument to fermentation lay a worn leatherette watch strap. It no longer shone; it had lost all its glory to the years. And there, on that lab tray, lay the task: combine these two relics of human creation. Not mechanically, not superficially, but deeply, at the molecular level. As if in an alchemical marriage of two bygone eras.