Dave raised his eyebrows. What did Brisa know? She had heard about genetics, he remembered, and read a bunch of science from when humans were a thing in Cowboy World, right?
"Well, the coolest thing about life is when you get right down to it it's all just a bunch of molecules. No magic, no animating soul, just the laws of physics all the way down. All life is about at its core is just that some way or another you get a molecule that's self-replicating. Makes more copies of itself. There's nothing special or magic about it, it's just the shape of that molecule and its properties eventually leads to another copy of the molecule. At first it'd just have been a simple strand that works as a template - other molecules that happen to bump into it stick to it in a way that chains them together into another strand that's a mirror image of it. But sometimes maybe it's not copied perfectly, because this is all just molecules bumping into each other. And maybe depending on those differences, it can be better or worse at making copies of itself. Right?" He looked at her to make sure she was following.
"Well, that's literally all you need to get evolution. Once you've got something that self-replicates, and sometimes it does so imperfectly, and the differences can affect its ability to replicate, then you're going to end up with more copies of the versions that are best at replicating. Tautologically, right? So the replicators overall are going to get better and better at it, in whatever environment they're in. And part of what these molecules might do is they can catalyze the formation of other molecules, and maybe those somehow help it keep replicating, directly or indirectly. So then if you fast-forward a few billion years from there, the replicators are building entire elaborate organisms carrying billions of copies of themselves, and those organisms have evolved to be so complex they've got brains that can figure out how the replicators work. And then they can go fuck you, I don't want kids." He smirked.
"We're a bunch of lumbering vehicles for blind self-replicators with the self-awareness to defy them and do whatever we want, and if you ask me that's fucking inspiring."
