Stepping Out

I was fairly sure that I was witnessing the escape of a wiggle-tail 5-ring from it's attraction zone. Recovered from the surprise of the head-on view, I scanned away from the charged One and spotted the familiar tail, without its characteristic bend. Straightened out and extended, the base of the tail was supported by an extra Six-triple-One group attached to the neighboring Six in the ring.

Unable to bend toward the ring, the tail was no longer functional as a drive mechanism. Unfit for the attraction zone, this inactivated 5-ring was doomed to a slow existence being bounced around in the soup until it met some other fate. As I scanned the new appendage, the Electrons began to swingshot around the Six, and the entire structure began to rotate.

The juxtaposition of the long and short tails on the 5-ring was sloped enough that once a One-Eight-One had been passed by, it was locked and blocked. The path over the short tail was definitely one-way, and with that, progress was being made. The gimpy 5-ring moved slowly away from the zone and out from under the monster that had been atop it.