Most birth stories begin with vulnerability, nakedness, and dependence. But there are other stories—stories no one remembers, and which therefore float secretly in the air we breathe. There, amidst the breaths of people, float cubes of thick white smoke. They are the cradles of another kind of existence. From these cubes, not a child is born, but an adult human being just beginning to live, as if the time of growing up were a forgotten shadow.