Eva

by Peter Dickinson

What you are is a pattern, an arrangement, different from any other pattern that ever was or will be.

you aren’t a mind in a body, you’re a mind and a body, and they’re both you.

Suppose I went out sailing with my daughter and a young chimp, and the boat capsized and I had the chance to save one of you but not both—you wouldn’t expect me to save the chimp, would you?” “I sometimes think so,” said Mom, meaning to make a joke of it but getting it wrong. “Nonsense. It would be no choice at all. That was effectively the same decision we had to make about you. And then if I can make it in your case, what right have I to withhold a similar chance from someone else? Suppose I were in my boat with a chimp and a stranger’s child ...”

“Trouble with us humans is we keep forgetting we’re animals. You know what happens when an animal population expands beyond what the setup will bear? Nature finds ways of cutting them back.