The enemy is entropy

Left alone in a steady room, the field decays toward a flat, quiet state. The overnight runs showed it clearly: connections going generic, most of them lost by morning. A bigger field did not help. Adding cells only added more tissue to go uniform.

The v06 answer is a closed loop. The creature acts on the room and senses its own action. That is a gradient it makes for itself, so it stops depending on the room being interesting. A creature that can poke the world and feel the poke does not have to go quiet.