Staying human

Carl's line to Brandon (ch. 37) — 'If we get to the point where we don't help each other anymore, that's when we stop being human' — is the book's thesis and the book argues with it. For: covering the signs (ch. 23); choosing the residents (ch. 27); getting Li Jun and Zhang out (ch. 42). Against: the goblin babies he bombed knowing it was a dick move (ch. 16–ch. 18); the courtesans he kicked to death (ch. 26); Zev's focus group calling the residents dead weight; his own conclusion after Yolanda that it would have been kinder to leave them on the first floor (ch. 38), and after Elle that 'this isn't a kindness, keeping them safe' (ch. 37). Frank and Maggie are the alternative and the book lets the Maestro show what it looks like (ch. 43).

'You can't save them all,' Mordecai says of a weeping orc (ch. 14), and Carl gets up in the night anyway. The floor keeps asking the price: a manager stolen by a lie (ch. 1); a dwarf child saved by punching a guard, which costs them the town (ch. 20); a soul crystal caged because Katia has no pass (ch. 24); a genocide stopped by accident. 'This is my family' (ch. 12) is the book's answer, and the leaderboard's bounties are its rejoinder.

The floor's argument is with Mordecai's 'You can't save them all.' Carl hears it in his head over the stranded (ch. 15), over Bautista (ch. 18, ch. 21), and answers it with a broadcast, seven hundred hats, six carts and a drive to the end of the line (ch. 15, ch. 25, ch. 27, ch. 28): 'Each and every one' (ch. 24); 'Fuck you, Mordecai' (ch. 24). Against it, what people do to each other — a dagger on a dance floor, PVP coupons, phased bolts, a father who made his daughter a weapon, a psychiatrist who used her patient as bait (ch. 8, ch. 18, ch. 19, ch. 22) — 'Is this what we've become?' (ch. 24) — and what Carl does himself: Gary's hands, a mantaur in pieces (ch. 26, ch. 33). Donut's rebuke about Katia (ch. 14) and Katia's 'They came back for me' (ch. 21) are the small version. The large one is a train whistle and 'how much I needed other people' (ch. 34).

'Not a person killer, at least' — Donut, opening a hole under a friend rather than let him be killed (ch. 14); Carl's shame at his own relief. Ifechi's spell that cannot be cast on herself (ch. 4); Katia's five days proving she does not need him, 'a necessary feeling' (ch. 20); Imani's rule that no one is left behind (ch. 32); Florin's 'There is something left to fight for' (ch. 33); Katia leaving to protect people nobody else will (ch. 33). Against it: 'Stop. He's not the enemy.' 'Fuck you' (ch. 31); tens of thousands drowned as a favour, and 'a distant part of me was alarmed at this attitude' (ch. 34). Juice Box: 'If he had waited, he'd still be alive.'

'No matter what', promised in a pub with the water running (ch. 12); 'It's time for you to trust me', Donut deciding about Bea (ch. 18); 'You don't deserve how sad I feel right now', to a hologram (ch. 19); Donut frightened by his anger — 'It's scaring me' (ch. 23); 'That's not what we do here', about abandoning a vampire who saved him (ch. 44); 'That's not who I was. She knew that', over Miriam's ash (ch. 47); 'Trauma […] It's an explosion with your heart at the center' (ch. 49). Against it: a frightened orc killed for two stat points (ch. 25), a man he had started to like killed with his foot (ch. 53), a decision to walk into the Nothing (ch. 73), and, at the end, the mask he tells Donut to keep on until it is safe to take it off (ch. 77).

'That's not who we are, Donut' (ch. 16); 'We have to draw the line somewhere' over a dead crawler's card (ch. 47); 'We were losing more of ourselves every day' (ch. 60).

Survival has more than one meaning: an order to send a child dinosaur out, erased (ch. 30); a Conscription potion put away (ch. 48); a ring refused and swallowed (ch. 85); Bautista's shame at not being counted human (ch. 87); Katia made human again, and less (ch. 86).

Donut: 'Do you really think I could be a proper girlfriend for Carl? It’s a crime against nature' (ch. 16). Carl at the curb: 'I couldn’t react like that' (ch. 45); Bigs's word for what is beyond human: 'Real Gs' (ch. 60); 'Was I different?' (ch. 59); of the what-if apartments, 'That was the point, of course. But it still hurt' (ch. 76); 'It would never be me, and I needed to remember that' (ch. 95). Making a pig sapient crosses 'a line I’d never known was there' (ch. 94).