“Again, we can’t say for certain. I agree that we see correlation between higher-fidelity scans and more conventional humanoid morphology. Does that mean we should deliberately downgrade scan quality? I would be extremely hesitant to take any customer’s remains and scan them at anything less than the best quality we can possibly achieve. And once you have that data? You have to put all of the data at the disposal of the process, you can’t withhold information just based on a vague supposition that doing so would give that process the freedom to sprout wings.”

“Forget sprouting. What if the wings are already there?” Maeve asks.

“I don’t understand what you mean by that.”

“Neurologically. What if the brain is already hooked up in such a way that it ‘knows’ it has wings?”

“Go on. Because to be frank this conversation is fun and interesting but I have no idea where you’re going.”

“My brain started out like yours. It thought it had toes. Then my legs were removed. At first I had phantom pain but then my brain decided it didn’t have toes. If I die tomorrow and get scanned and booted up, that’s still what my simulated brain is going to be expecting.”

“I’m with you so far.”

“What if my brain does expect wings?”

The neurologist can do nothing but smile and turn his hands palm-up. Which is how the conversation ends.

But it was after that that Maeve began to train her brain to expect wings.