“Well—“
“You are not qualified,” Zeke interrupted. “Great, we have to get religious,” he grumbled, setting down his pen. “Broadly speaking, souls happen when life does. When life happens, it’s designed or naturally does or whatever to keep happening. Cooperation tends to make more life, thus souls start to cooperate. They all want to keep existing, so they do what they can to not die. Basically, you are your soul. Whatever events made you happen made your soul happen.”
He cleared his throat, made eye contact with Jesse, glanced at the child with them, and looked back at Jesse. “I hope I don’t need to explain their conception any further. The easiest way to tell if you have a soul is to examine its base features: Desire to live, and unwillingness to kill. If you want to live and don’t want anyone else to die, you probably have a soul. But, if you have reasons to kill, like you want to keep living, it’s more up in the air.”
He started to look bored and spun his pen around on his claws. “So long as everyone here wants to stay alive, and nobody’s tried to kill anyone, we all have souls, and Mr. President’s sensors are terrible.”
