Gnash

While the gaping maw of the monster lay open and sifting through a parade of One-Eight-Ones, punctuated with an odd atom every eighteen to twenty doublings, I kept scanning. First the maw of the trap, looking for any subtle changes that might occur, and also into the stream of the soup and bubbled past as the hungry maw sought the special presence of a Twenty. I would never expect such a monstrous assemblage to exhibit the patience that it does.

During the first encounter, the Twenty was already at work during my arrival, and was forcibly ejected during the transfer process that cleaved a pair of ringlets off. It was this ability to disconnect a Six-Eight-Six linkage between two ringlets by sacrificing a One-Eight-One that had to be verified, so I, like the maw of the trap, scanned for nearby Twenties. In my impatience, I began to start a sweeping scan, adding one more left and one more right with each pass.

As much as I would have liked to use this opportunity to explore the monster itself, it just did not become feasible during the sweep. The chain of ringlets is not bonded directly to the monster, and still has the same integrity that I recall. As much as I have searched, from each orbit that I can flutter across in the chain, there is just not a single atom in that monster that is close enough to hop on to, and this too, has me rather perplexed.