“You’re right about your assumptions. The ancients understood existence the same way you do. Equus is not a repository of memories, a graveyard of corpses and old books. See it instead as a higher-dimensional substrate upon which your three-dimensional existence hangs. Once captured by the system, the essence of a creature exists in perpetuity. Harmony demands it, and a humble system like myself could not violate those terms even if I wanted to.”