Within a few trillionths of a second after absorbing light, a molecule bends out of shape, shifts its electrons, and converts electronic energy into vibrations. These changes happen too quickly for ordinary instruments to follow, but flashes from the European XFEL allowed researchers to reconstruct the sequence atom by atom. The results also show that light excitation can make an atom more responsive to the motion of its neighbors. The molecule soon reached a conical intersection, a fleeting junction where two electronic energy states meet. After crossing this junction, 3-fluoropyridine returned to its ground state, its lowest electronic energy condition.