Traffic Life : Passionate Tales and Exit Strategies
Edited by Stephan Wehner
An Anthology
 
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178 Traffic Zoology around slow-moving vehicles, and even slip through packs of alien worms, wild axenes and other traffic froth to arrive on the other side intact. Of course, not all Cholingers slip through the strangers: sometimes they interact. Every Cholinger is either benthic or pelagic. Benthic Chol- ingers travel at a similar rate to the currents of the road, while Pelagic Cholingers travel at a dissimilar rate when compared to other traffic (typically a faster rate). It is possi- ble, however, for a benthic line to be picked up and carried along by a pelagic cousin, leading to a coupled form. This is the first real Aggregate Traffic Animal we will meet tonight: a bilaterally asymmetrical diageotrope known as the Epi- physian Cyclosalp. Within the body of the Cyclosalp the individual Choling- ers are transmuted into a pair of Librigenates-stretchy, free-flowing tissue that is bounded in space by the relation- ship with its partner, the accelerating pelagic lobe sliding forward and the steady benthic lobe catching up in a slow- motion slingshot, compressing and expanding between the loose, senseless clumps of other cars. This accordion-like effect might initially seem to be a force tearing the ani- mal apart, rending pelagic from benthic-and this is in- deed what might happen in too rarified an atmosphere- but when presented with obstacles of any kind, the Lib- rigenates that comprise the Cyclosalp fall back on their Cholinger heritage of local integrity, crystallising en masse to navigate the hazard. Unfettered, the Epiphysian Cyclosalp is like half a but- terfly, its riparian body gilded by a slowly flapping wing of accelerating, gliding Librigenates ebbing and flowing in a stately round. Its insides whorl as partners switch places, benthic turning briefly pelagic, pacer cars joining a rippling pulse of local inertia forward, headlights cross-sweeping. It is beyond the scope of this article to detail the myr- iad circumstances that provide seed for the profitable en- tanglement of multiple Cyclosalpic streams. So diverse are the possibilities that we could fill a Biblical tome without scratching the surface, without revealing the common
  
Matthew Frederick Davis Hemming 179 thread of simplicity upon which the complexity hinges. Suf- fice it to say the larger clade includes such varied forms as the whiplashing Epinastic Tricyclosalp, the many-fingered Dicyclosalp Fimbriatum, and the diaphanous, fleeting won- der of the mile-long Merosporangic Super-Cyclosalp... Of course, not all Asipetal Caterpillars grow up to be- come stately Cholingers; instead, they lock into rigid sticks of uniform properties called Pycnoblastoids. While short- lived Apiculate Pycnoblastoids (in which the Apparent Cox- swain is always the most forward car) are more common, it is the more flexible Laxiflorous Pycnoblastoid (in which the Apparent Coxswain is any car except that most forward) that lives a more fruitful life. For instance, consider the case of a typical composite entity like a Tripycnoblastic Oomycotum, in which indepen- dent pycnoblasts jockey for position internally directly or by proxy through one or more Napoleonic Coxswains (that is, drivers who suffer from the delusion that they are single- handedly responsible for steering/leading their local sub- structure). The domino-line behaviour of an Apiculate Py- cnoblastoid makes it too brittle to survive the stresses of being permeated by a competing pycnoblast, whereas the comparatively elastic structure of the Laxifloroid-imparted due to the inherent time delay involved in co-ordinating with a mid-fleet Apparent Coxswain-retains a perfect bal- ance of rigidity and looseness, riding a line between orches- tration and dissolution that makes composite forms like Oomycota possible. Pycnoblastic tissue is unusual in that it makes use of some level of awareness on the part of the driver that they are participating in a formation (though drivers are only likely to be aware of the local level of structure). When this awareness reaches a certain level the composite entity is usually destroyed by internal stresses, but occasionally a dissolving multi-pycnoblast will emit a stream of highly en- ergised vehicles: the Apheresoid Lirellate, a concentrated apiculatoid pycnoblast flung free from the miasma of death to rocket away, using for a coxswain the abandoned carcass itself.

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