Marblelike

Meanwhile, Ann Bartek's semiabstract set--a mostly bare marblelike playing area decorated with straight and jagged stripes suggesting telephone wires—reminds us that this is a story steeped in a world-changing technological revolution.

Physicists back then explained the durability of matter by assuming that it was made up of identical, indestructible, marblelike atoms.

They were diverse morphologically--rods, spirals, marblelike cells--but they all had the same kind of biochemistry.