"It's conventional to mark the bright line at birth but in terms of when I start feeling they're people I guess, hm, when they start doing social smiles."

"Why then?"

"Honestly I did not give this question a lot of thought before today."

"It just seems like lots of non-people animals probably do things equivalent to that.  And obviously plenty of non-people animals are born . . ."

"I am aware that many animals are born."

"So then why is that the conventional line?"

"- oh, uh, because of the history of abortion probably."

"Which is . . ."

"...I studied economics, not history. Some people feel strongly that abortion is murder and some people do not, or feel that it's justifiable murder in self-defense or whatever, and basically nobody felt motivated to defend infanticide, so it's popular to mark 'is it a person and therefore murder' at birth."

"I . . . see.  We don't kill babies just because they aren't people yet, for the record."

"I am relieved to hear it."

"I have the impression that we're missing something here."

"...I don't? We're just, uh, from different cultures, that's not a mystery," says Sarham.

" - Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you're . . . placing more importance on what beings count as people than I would expect, if we were just trying to pin down a trivial cultural difference."

"...it's been the frame of a lot of historical conflicts about how to treat and how much to protect some, uh. ...some people, for lack of a better word, small children included."

"Hmmm.  Maybe I should - find you someone with a small child to meet?  Or two, one on each side of personhood . . ."

"I'm not really equipped to go on a youth rights crusade even if you need one, honestly."

"I don't think we need one!  But what's the point of having aliens if you don't even try to use them to fill the gaps in your perspective?"

"If you would like my opinion on some random person's parenting I can do that."

"I'll put it on the list."

"What else is on the list?"

Without referencing anything written: "Getting as much information as possible about your technology and societies, answering any questions you have, evaluating how much money is reasonable to be giving you on a regular basis, teaching you Cretari, getting people to make bicycles and safety razors and maybe a lighting system for you and talking to someone about the potential upsides of shower pressure.  Having you, Kyeo specifically, meet with Colley to see if she can help fix your voice, finding cultural and artistic experts for you both to talk to you about subjects I'm not as versed in, finding out about whether people with brain damage can be copied from, finding out what your legal status would be if you can copy - and whether you can copy, presumably - and distributing all that information to wherever it can best be used to help society.  And in general being your liaison to the rest of our world whenever you might need one."

"Wow. Thank you very much for helping us with all that - I'm not sure what of those things we can best make progress on right now?"

"Did you have more technological basics I could send to people so they can get started on engineering things?"

"Do you have, uh, petroleum. I have no idea how to refine it but I know it's important as a fuel and as a material to make plastic out of somehow."