The short form engine shown is by far the most common found in The Wild but still has a disproportionate influence on the overall structure of evolving patterns because of the subtle difference shown here. The kind of common tracks shown erode at 3/5 speed in a reaction which has a period of ten with the second five being a mirror image of the first five.

Depending which phase the erosion is in when it reaches the short engine, it either reblocks or it creates one puff of a p.192 puffer trail, the eroding track being reestablished in the same phase after separating from the puff. Various reactions can either remove the block or form a break along a track, leaving it eroding at 3/5 speed, but the source of such a disturbance can have originated a vast distance from the engine and track so the phase relationship can only be treated as statistical. In both The Wild and Whoa, the first engines reblocked more than once before turning puffer at a great distance from their chaotic core. The first puff sooner or later reacts with incoming ships to form a new chaotic growth centre, eventually forming the kind of continental growth highlighted by the thumbnails in the picture show posts below, which it was too easy to name Honalee.

This is far from the only important fifty-fifty reaction in The Wild, but there are a seemingly limitless range of higher order synchronisation and alignment dependencies too.