Solving the edge problem was another matter when teams were forced to use simple lines scratched on a dock or cargo hatch, playing with wind-up or sun-powered pieces. As a partial solution, men sometimes laid rows of static, unpowered black or white pieces along the rim of the playing field, to try constraining the action. Maia knew the slang term for the alternating checker border was "the mirror," although only a few life patterns would actually reflect off the fixed boundary back into the game arena. Others would simply be absorbed or destroyed.
An edge pattern also made starting the game easier, since any square in the first playing row already had either one or two "living" neighbors, just below it.
Row Two — Row One — Boundary Row — (permanent)
Removing the thin writing stylus from its slot on the control panel, she stroked a square on the first row, turning it black.
The solitary "living" square was born with two black neighbors on the fixed boundary row below, touching it at the corners. Now Maia gave it another black neighbor, to its left. With three black, or living, neighbors now, the first activated square should remain "alive" … at least through the second round.
Maia sighed. All right. Let's see if I can make a simple ladder.
She worked her way across the first row, turning a few squares dark, leaving some blank, and so on. Maia did not feel ready to take on more complicated starting conditions quite yet, so after touching about forty squares she called it enough. The rest of the board was left pale, untouched.
•• IB H ••••••• I ••••
I I I I I I I I I I I I • I I I I I
Knowing the rules, Maia could guess what might happen to a particular square next round, by carefully counting the number of black neighbors it had now. It didn't take much effort to project the fates of up to a dozen squares, one or two rounds into the future. Then she lost track. To find out what would happen after that, she must set the game in motion.
Peering at the control panel, she found a button embossed with a figure of a cowled man holding a long staff. The symbol for a referee, Maia decided, and pressed the button. A low note pulsed slowly, the traditional countdown. At the eighth beat the game commenced, and change abruptly rippled along the active row. Wherever a square had precisely the right number of neighbors, that square flickered. Then all those squares turned, or remained, black. Those that failed the test turned, or remained, white. The checker pattern along the boundary stayed the same.
Now there were some black squares on the second active row, as well as the first. A few spots on the formerly all-white expanse had met the conditions for coming alive.
With the next timing pulse, more squares died than were born, and it was only with the fourth round that any positions came alive on the third row. Maia saw with mild chagrin that she had chosen a losing sequence for her initial condition. Ah, well. She waited till the last, gasping cluster of dark points expired, and immediately tried again with a new pattern along the first row.
This time pretty much the same thing happened, except near the far left, where an entity took shape — a small group of cells that winked on and off in a repeating pattern, over and over. Oh, yes, Maia remembered. That's a "microbe."
While its individual parts flickered with different rhythms, each unit choosing a different tempo to flip from dark to pale or back again, the isolated configuration as a whole kept renewing itself. After twenty beats, the rest of the board lay empty, but this small patch remained stable, repetitiously persistent. Maia felt a flush of pleasure at having reinvented one of the simplest Life-forms on just her second go. She wiped the board and tried again, creating microbes all across the bottom edge. If left alone, they would whirl and gyre in place until the batteries ran out.
That was the extent of her beginner's luck. Maia spent much of the next hour experimenting without finding another self-sustaining form. It was frustrating, since she recalled that some of the classics were absurdly simple.
A metallic clanking behind her announced the guards' arrival with lunch. Maia got up, spreading her arms and stretching a crick in her back. Only when she went over to sit down at the table, and felt the stout women staring at her, did it come to her attention that she was humming, and must have been doing so for some time.
Huh! Maia thought. But then, it wasn't surprising to be glad something had drawn her from her troubles for a while. We'll see if this diversion lasts as long as those books did. To which she added, Just don't count on my being too distracted to notice, my fat Guel keepers, if you ever relax your guard, or stop coming in pairs. Someday you'll slip up. I'm watching.
