He pointed at the screen, to a big dark area, a dead spot in Ethan Levin’s world. Slowly, as we watched, new X’s appeared, the habitat regrowing, renewing itself.

“Yeah,” I said. Then I asked: “Do the living O-creatures ever remember the ones that died?”

He squinted at me and said nothing.

“And the ones who are starving, do they know they’re going to die?”

He snorted. “Stupid.”

But I persisted. “If you’re going to simulate life—I mean, intelligent life—sooner or later you’ll have to account for the fact that the way we live has something to do with the fact that we know we’re going to die.”

I watched his eyes careen around in their sockets as if he were scanning through his program, trying to imagine what sort of C-code structures could contain memories of the dead and foreknowledge of death. Then abruptly he ran his hands through his hair and broke it off.