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The Railway Table Chronicles - Episode II

by Carla Billinghurst
 

 

Emergent systems have a logic all of their own: a few simple rules create something more complex than we could have designed. For a long time I thought “don't take too many” was one of the rules. After all, using the Railway Table as a model, if we all took too many books then there would be none left. But this is a tiny system sitting within the much bigger World Publishing And Books System. It is not closed off – new books can enter, other books can leave.

Just before Christmas I met Ryan, the new station master, in the waiting room and he was fuming. Someone had told him they had seen books from the Railway Table for sale at the local second-hand shop. It was very depressing; I had that lowering sense of “it's all over”. Ryan told me, with some enjoyment, that if someone came onto the station to steal books then he could have them for trespassing because they wouldn't have a ticket. It was all a bit much and I just agreed that it was terrible. For now, Ryan was going to keep all the donated books in his office and just put out one or two at a time. That would discourage the terrible predator, keep the fox away from the chicken-house.

On the train, I thought about Jamie, who had been station master for many years before Ryan and calmly presided over the vagaries of the book table, always made sure there were tissues in the Ladies and never once complained. About anything. Ryan was always complaining. I began to think this was more about Ryan than about the Railway Table.

Everyone had a bit of a break over Christmas. I wandered miserably past the table (two copies of “Good Housekeeping”, an Alistair Maclean and a kids book about cowboys) and wondered what would really happen if someone was taking books. If a secondhand dealer gave them 50cents each, they would be lucky to make five dollars. And if any of the book-users were around, not to mention Ryan (and the waiting room is only open when he is on duty), then there would be a challenge: “Why do you need so many books? Are you the Evil Book Snatcher?”

I decided the whole thing was a Ryan-fantasy and came back from Christmas invigorated and with a bag of books. In an Act of Rebellion, I laid out my half-dozen books on the table and scuttled away without talking to him. Other people were doing the same thing. The table was groaning under the weight of books and magazines. It was a statement of power. “We are many – don't mess with us!”

Now it's all back to normal – about 20 books on the table and no complaints from Ryan. The great thing about Emergent Systems is that they have in-built mechanisms to control excess – both greed and selfishness.

The lesson in survival that is emerging from studies in Emergence is this: at every level of “fitness”, when a creature or system has evolved to a particular degree of richness, an appropriate predator will appear. The predator forces the system to change itself to avoid being destroyed. The system becomes a little more complex, a little more defensive or aggressive, and thereby more successful. Sometimes, the only way for a system to become more successful is for it to completely disassemble and re-build itself, with slightly different underlying characteristics. Like restarting a game of patience and re-building the solution along new lines. What happened here? We all became a little more protective of the table. We lost a little innocence and perhaps forged a stronger determination to keep the system going. We did all of that without talking to each other, without forming a committee and without even putting up a notice!

Last Episode: Introducing the Railway Chronicles

Next Episode: Systems that Give you What you Wish for

About the Author

Carla Billinghurst is the reviews editor for Perilous Adventures

 

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