They Wake Up Now

Sleep in this simulation is not a flag. It is a chemical state. Melatonin rises on a circadian cycle, which feeds Sleepiness, which crosses a threshold and triggers the sleep action. While sleeping, the creature consolidates memories — replaying recent experiences, strengthening important ones, letting trivial ones fade. It is a real process doing real work. The problem was that the process never ended.

The wake condition required Sleepiness to reach zero. But the circadian system never lets it reach zero — Melatonin keeps feeding it from underneath. The drain rate and the feed rate reached equilibrium somewhere around 0.65, and the creatures floated there forever. Asleep. Dreaming. Silent. The ship went quiet and stayed quiet.

The fix is a realistic threshold: wake when rested enough, not when perfectly rested. A hysteresis band between 0.3 and 0.6 prevents the old rapid oscillation where a creature would sleep for one tick, wake, immediately feel tired, and sleep again. Now they sleep deeply, dream properly, and open their eyes after about twenty seconds of game time. The silence breaks. The ship fills with voices again.