A short story in SF Magazine Aug 2022
Koichi Harukure “Mortal Game”
The Search for Interstellar Life project has discovered an organic cellular automaton. The rules are deterministic, and calculations show that all “cells” will disappear in the near future. Cellular automata are life-like if they are self-replicators that spontaneously reproduce from their environment, whereas a phenomenon whose behavior can be computed deterministically cannot be treated as life. Should we leave the automaton untouched and let it “go extinct” in order not to disturb its natural environment, or should we “breed” it and modify the rules to foster long-period patterns? The team’s conclusion is…
This is the story of a human being’s journey to an alien planet in search of an unknown phenomenon, the discovery of a phenomenon that fulfills that very purpose, and how humans deal with things that cannot be captured within the framework of existing science. The spontaneous generation of an organic automaton is a plausible scenario, considering the spontaneous generation of life, and the life-like nature of such a quasi-life form is exactly what is being discussed in the artificial life field.
Can we call a phenomenon whose behavior can be deterministically determined life?
If it is life, can we call an electronically simulated pattern of that phenomenon life?
Would we not call life a being that survives by any means and resists its own destruction?
But the focus of this story is not the alien cellular automaton, nor the discussion of its vitality, but the outpouring of human imagination and creativity towards the unknown. The conclusion of introducing non-deterministic elements into a deterministic system is exactly one direction of artificial life production toward an Open-Ended system.
See for yourself how this story will end.