What does it cost, and what does it give, to become knowing? A garden, a tree, a fruit, and the moment a living being's eyes are opened. We tell the scene slowly, with all its psychology, and lay beside it what research knows about the awakening of self-awareness. And we run into a question science is still biting on today.

Topics: Genesis 2 and 3, the mirror test, theory of mind, cave art and the first graves, the hard problem of consciousness, and the question: fall or birth?

Sources and notes: Genesis 2 and 3 (the garden of Eden, two trees, the serpent, "their eyes were opened", the expulsion), retold freely; short quotations follow the public-domain World English Bible. Mirror test: developed by Gordon G. Gallup Jr. (1970); passed by great apes, dolphins, elephants and magpies, among others; human children from about 18 months. Theory of mind (understanding false beliefs from about age four): developmental-psychology consensus. Early symbolic behaviour: engraved ochre pieces from Blombos Cave (on the order of 70,000 to 100,000 years); cave paintings of Chauvet Cave (on the order of 36,000 years); early burials with grave goods; dates rounded, research in flux. "The hard problem of consciousness": coined by David Chalmers (1995), unsolved to this day. Cultural echo: Prometheus brings fire, and with it hardship (ancient Greek tradition), as a parallel to the motif that knowledge has its price.

Conceived by a human, narrated with the support of AI. Old stories. New knowledge.