Immediately after the Beginning, the universe was a rather small localized region in space holding a highly energetic plasma like soup. Very quickly, this soup became a shower prototypic particles, called protectons. It also held other particles like our present day neutrinos. Excess particle energy appeared in the form of photons, or remained in the particles elevating the particles into excited states of the particles.
This very quick era was followed by the decomposition of each of the protectons into a proton and an electron. This explains why there are an equal number of protons and electrons in the universe.
Very ahortly thereafter, there were many attempts by the particles again bind a proton to an electron as they had been before, which were unsuccessful; but, two new forms appeared.
In the first new form, The electron is bound to the proton, not as a single particle but rather as a proton standing alone surrounded by an electron which is actively circulating at a finite distance from the proton.
In the second new form, a proton, an electron and a neutrino bound into a new particle, the neutron. The neutron was not stable while it was isolated in space. It has a mean lifetime of under 900 seconds before it decomposes back into a proton, an electron and a neutrino.
Even though the isolated neutron was unstable, it was able to bind with a second proton and lose energy by the emission of a photon. It appears that this form of binding only occured at a time very close to the Beginning.
Similarly. the proton-neutron pair could bond with other proton-neutron pairs. Each pair and each clump of pairs were able to grab enough electrons and place them in orbits around the pairs. Atoms as they are seen today are the result of this binding, as well as the single binding of an electron to a proton that we see as a hydrogen atom. The reason that these bondings are possible is given in a companion document.
Many have argued that all of the above events happened in an extremely short time after the Beginning.