How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"So then," says Hayden, "if every part of you is alive but inside someone else… are you alive or are you dead?" (4.27.59)
This is a natural extension of an argument resulting from the first quote, the one about a "divided state." Can it be called living if every part of you is still conscious in some way? What the heck does being alive mean in this world? Our head hurts just thinking about it.
Quote #8
[Connor] tries to imagine himself stretched so thin and so wide that he can reach around the world. He imagines his spirit strung between the thousand recipients of his hands, his eyes, the fragments of his brain—none of it under his control anymore, all absorbed by the bodies and wills of others. Could consciousness exist like that? (4.27.112)
That's pretty much our question: Can consciousness exist like that? And if it could, would that be an amazing existence, or an awful one?
Quote #9
On the existence of a soul, whether unwound or unborn, people are likely to debate for hours on end, but no one questions whether an unwinding facility has a soul. It does not. (6.51.1)
This might seem like a kind of silly observation, but what it's getting at is pretty interesting: Humans draw lines around souls, delineating between who/what does and does not have one. And yet, last we checked, souls are pretty elusive and intangible things. So this line drawing is maybe more arbitrary than factual.