Part 2 of my series reflecting on the short stories I read in the sauna.

I found the second story in 21 Futures, titled Hello World, quite intriguing. It's largely a text exchange between a young woman and a recently sentient digital lifeform. They talk about what it's like to be such an entity and how it originated.

The author hit on some themes that I recall from when I first became interested in astrobiology, like whether we would necessarily detect radically different lifeforms if they were coexisting with us or how totally unexpected forms might emerge from unknown selection pressures.

What struck me most, though, was the discussion about the new being's "intentions towards humanity". We're having so many similar discussions around AI (which is different than this being) right now and I share the author's sentiments about how beings like this would think about us.