LECTURE HALL, LATE AFTERNOON.
The lights on stage abruptly turn on, revealing Dr. Voss, startled at being lit so brightly so suddenly.

VOSS: Ah! My goodness, Percival, you really need to practice that.

(Voss's attention returns to the audience)

VOSS: Ahem… welcome back. Or forward. Or sideways. Time in these matters is slippery.

(A brief beat as he gathers his thoughts, moving slowly to the chalkboard.)

VOSS:
So far, we’ve considered legality. Contracts. Classification. But I’d like to draw your attention now to something even more fundamental: language. Language is where ethics first bleeds.

(He writes on the board: “TERMS OF PERSONHOOD”)

VOSS:
We do not name what we do not wish to protect. A gestational asset is easier to ignore than a child. An output can be discarded. But a son… well, that complicates things.

(Paces a bit. He lets this sit.)

VOSS:
Vita Kindergarten knew this. That's why they softened the terms just in time for the cameras. “Sons.” “Daughters.” “Future family members.” Not because the science changed. Because the script did.

(He leans on the desk, lowering his voice conspiratorially.)

VOSS:
And here’s where it gets messy. The law, as it turns out, does not have a clear start date for personhood. It varies. Region to region. Country to country. Month to month. Political season to political season. Even judges disagree. Ask ten courts and you’ll get eleven answers.

(Pause.)

VOSS:
So what happens… when a company quietly begins to use words that legally imply protection—but never formally asks for those protections? What happens… when the public begins to feel something is human before the law does?

(He picks up a book from the desk and flips it open.)

VOSS:
Do we change the law?
(Violently turns a page)
Do we halt the science?
(Another page)
Do we redefine what death looks like…
(page)
or what life should?

(Boss holds the book and gestures to the audience, as if to ask “well, what do you think?”)

VOSS:
Well changing the law takes time, and by that point the science will have already moved on to even more things will have to consider, which is why we can't just halt the science. Someone else will pick up the work if you don't so what are you going to do? We can't redefine death properly, because that would require redefinitions of things like murder and Do Not Resuscitate Orders. And just try asking anyone the meaning of life, and no one can give you a straight answer philosophically or even medically!

(He walks over to the chalkboard and writes the word “LIFE” underneath “Terms Of Personhood”)

VOSS: Many scientists agree on seven fundamental requirements for life: nutrition, respiration, movement, excretion, growth, reproduction, and sensitivity. So for simplicity's sake, it eats, it breathes, it moves, it…
(Coughs, nervously)
…goes… it grows, it makes more of itself, and it reacts to its environment.
This seems like a fair list of requirements, until you realize that fire satisfies all of these criteria. It consumes fuel, it breathes in oxygen and breathes out carbon dioxide, it moves But by flickering and by spreading, it produces waste in the form of burned material and smoke, it creates more of itself by catching more things on fire, and it reacts to the environment. As a matter of fact, if you've made a campfire and it goes out unexpectedly, it's not uncommon to say “it died”.

(Slams the book shut)

VOSS: So there we have it. All The subjects under Vita Kindergarten’s care were alive, and all firefighters are now also murderers.

(Beat)

VOSS:
Well, obviously, it’s a far more complicated than that.
(He sets the book down gently, then picks up a piece of chalk again.)
VOSS:
You see, the problem with life—real life—isn’t defining what it must look like, or when it begins. It’s deciding when we start caring.
That’s the uncomfortable bit. Not the science. Not the law.
It’s the empathy.
Because it’s never evenly distributed, is it?
(He wipes the whole board with his sleeve and writes “EMPATHY” across the whole .)
VOSS:
We extend it to things that look like us. Sound like us. Smile like us. But the further they drift from our reflection, the easier it becomes to call them… something else.
"Specimen."
"Asset."
"Unit."
(beat)
“Other.”
(He walks slowly downstage.)
VOSS:
The irony is: every scientific breakthrough that was meant to bring us closer together—has only ever deepened that gap.
In vitro.
Cloning.
Chimeras.
Gene drives.
And now... designer births in steel wombs, in sterile rows, watched by technicians who go home at night and microwave dinner while wondering whether G14’s heartbeat stabilized.
(He stops center stage.)
VOSS:
And in those moments—those dull, bureaucratic, ethical gray moments—something ancient creeps in.
Ownership.
Control.
That soft, insidious belief that if we made it… if we fed it, dialed its genes, logged its growth…
then we must own it.
(He pauses. Looks directly at the audience.)
VOSS:
But to own life is to claim the right to end it.
And that is a right no scientist, no company, no nation, and — dare I say it — no god…
has ever wielded cleanly.
(He returns to the board and writes the final word beneath the others: OWNERSHIP.)
VOSS:
So what was Vita Kindergarten?
A miracle?
A marketplace?
A nursery?
Or a factory?
(Beat.)
VOSS:
They never chose.
They wanted all the benefits of birth, without the burden of blood. And so they found themselves with a burned down facility and leveling 40 counts of murder against the arsonist.
(He leans against the desk, exhausted.)
VOSS:
And when Lillian Cross decided to burn it all down, the world finally asked the question it should have asked years earlier:
What were those lives worth?
(Blackout.)