Seedship

Let’s say Planet Earth becomes uninhabitable to humans. Let’s say we have the technology to build an interstellar spacecraft to find a new habitable world. This ‘ark’ will contain some number of ‘colonists’ along with whatever resources can be included so that (human) ‘civilization’ can be jumpstarted again on extra-terrestial soil. Sounds like a plot for many a sci-fi book or movie.

 

Let’s say that any orb in our solar system is not practically habitable (sorry, Mars!) or that we humans have also fouled up any planets or moons that might have housed us. Let’s say that there’s no alien teleporter gate (as in The Expanse) or wormhole (as in Interstellar) or light-speed-jumps (too many examples!) or any of those devices in sci fi that get us over the long boring leagues of space. If so, we’d need a cryogenic setup that maintains the colonists in stasis and that wakes them up when a suitable habitable planet is found. Let’s say that no one wakes up too early (as in Passengers with Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence).

 

Let’s say an Artificial Intelligence has been programmed to scan other worlds for potential habitability, and is also ‘smart’ enough to deal with the hazards of space travel. How might it decide where to land and wake up the colonists? Let’s say the A.I. has only one shot. Once the ark makes landfall, the colonists are awakened. Time for the humans to restart civilization. Hopefully they survive. Hopefully they thrive. Can the A.I. make better decisions than humans (who wouldn’t live long enough if they weren’t in cryogenic sleep)? Is the A.I. smarter than a fifth-grader?

 

Well… you get to try it out, and it just takes a few minutes of your time!

 

Let’s say the roles are reversed and YOU get to play the A.I. That’s what John Ayliff’s Seedship is about. It’s a clever little text game that puts you in the role of A.I. of the Ark! You start with a thousand colonists. The ship has scanners for a planet’s atmosphere, gravity, temperature, potential resources, and presence of water. There are ten probes you can send to the surface to get more details including the possibility of plant life, animal life, structures of other civilizations. (Will you ignore the Star Trek prime directive?) The ship has systems for landing and construction to get civilization restarted, and carries both scientific and cultural informational databases.

 

A lot can happen in space. How will A.I. YOU handle the hazards? Or the opportunities? I won’t tell you what they are so you can have fun exploring on your own.

 

I did surprisingly well on my first try finding a suitable planet. Here are my end-screen stats!

 

I’ve played ten games now to explore different possibilities. None of them were better than my first try (although one came very close). Perhaps multiple arks were sent out in different directions, and hopefully humanity finds a home in some of them – that’s what I imagine is happening when one plays multiple games. Even if you aren’t into sci-fi, you might find Seedship a fun, distracting exercise. For a few minutes, imagine you are the all-knowing A.I.!