3D Cellular Automaton — Layer-Slice Grid (2D)

This 2D companion runs the identical 14×14×14 voxel cellular automaton as the 3D version — a 26-neighbor birth/survival rule applied to every cell each generation — but instead of a rotatable volumetric scene it slices the cube into its 14 horizontal Z-layers and tiles them as a mosaic of small 2D grids, plus one enlarged focus layer you scrub through with a slider. It is a genuinely different way to read a 3D automaton: rather than inferring structure from rotation and occlusion, you see every depth slice simultaneously, the way a CT or MRI scan is read one cross-section at a time, while live per-layer occupancy stats make the cube's density pattern legible at a glance.