“Go back to sleep.”
“Do you see what I’m saying, though — say you began by losing an eye and replaced it with a synthetic one, and you’ve got synthetic nerves going into your brain, and gradually over time more and more of your corporeal body is replaced with robot parts. At what point are you now a robot? And are you then a robot with a soul, contra what that man at the robot-detecting machine said to me?”
“Robot detect—” Mobius rubbed his eyes. “Did Frank tell you that thing about the temporal aura imaging system vaporizes robots? I told him to cut that shit out. He thinks it’s funny. Swear to god, I’m gonna ask Ravonna to have him transferred.”
“Transferred to where?” Loki said, thinking again of the vast confusing cityscape he’d seen on his first day.
“You don’t wanna know, baby.” Mobius lifted his head enough to give him a little kiss on the chin. “Go back to sleep.”
“But the synthetic man we were talking about,” Loki continued, though the gentle weight of Mobius settling his head back down on his chest tugged him towards sleep.
“You were talking about,” Mobius corrected in a soft mumble.
“Does he possess a soul?” Loki played with Mobius’s hair contemplatively. It would look better given a little more freedom, he thought. “If not, when exactly did he lose it? And where did it go?”
Mobius’s answer was an inaudible murmur, and soon Loki realized he’d fallen asleep again. Mobius slept so soundly, seemed so solid and peaceful, here in the strangest place in the universe. Nice work if you can get it, Loki thought to himself, though he wasn’t quite sure he believed that to be true.