“I know what you’ll say,” Martin interrupted—braver than she had sounded before. She stood beside Olivia now, almost as confident as she was. Ponies all around them backed away a few steps, looking away and pretending they couldn’t hear. “You have some… system… that scans everything we think. Maybe you can keep that scan updated in real time. It’s incredible, it’s amazing—but it isn’t eternal life. Only the data lives forever. Each pony you killed is another consciousness destroyed. That consciousness only ever existed in the brain you were scanning. We aren’t Martin and Olivia… we’re their copies. Their… ghosts.”