Part of me wanted to spend the entire night up with Octavia, exchanging stories about our respective pasts, and grilling her on what she'd learned about the ecology of this desert during the years she'd spent here. However, the task I'd embarked on still lingered in my mind.

"Hey, Octavia."

"Hmm?"

"I rushed back to talk to you as soon as I learned how to talk. And talking with you has been great, but it kind of interrupted an errand."

"Oh, right," she said. "You were on your way to attack the ants from topside, so my reinforced webs could catch them down below."

"Yeah," I said. "I spent some SP demonstrating my breath attacks earlier, but I've still got plenty of gas in the tank. Do we still want to go through with that plan?"

"Why wouldn't we?" she asked.

"Well, now that we can talk, maybe we could form a more elaborate plan."

Octavia raised two of her legs in a casual gesture that almost looked like a shrug. "I already said everything I have to say. Did you have any ideas you wanted to share with me?"

"No, I suppose not," I said. "We already ran this maneuver once, albeit without any planning. In fact, it's the thing that gave me enough experience that I learned how to talk. So maybe it's worth running it back once again."

"Or as many times as we need to," said Octavia. "Who knows, if we can keep it up, we might actually succeed in wiping out the ants."

"How many of them do you think there are?"

Octavia seemed to consider the question for a moment. "I don't know. Thousands, at least," she said.

"That's unfortunate."

"Are you surprised?" she said. "Ants usually have colonies at least that big."

I nodded. "Where I come from — and where you come from — I know fire ant colonies can number in the hundreds of thousands. But these fire ants are bigger than the ones back on earth. Bigger creatures usually mean smaller group size. For one thing, there's simply less food to go around. Then there's the fact that when your eggs are tiny, a queen can lay over a thousand a day. But if the offspring require more parental investment, even from the basic standpoint of requiring more calories to churn out, obviously there's got to be fewer of them."

Octavia looked surprised. "Can an ant queen really lay over a thousand eggs a day? That's…dozens of eggs per hour. I thought killing a hundred or more ants in a day would put a dent in their numbers, but at that rate…"

"Again, a thousand eggs a day is the rate for the tiny ants back on earth," I said. "Not to say that it would be impossible for the fire ants to put up similar numbers here, but I'm guessing the rate is lower."

"Still," she said. "I knew their numbers were huge, but if you're creating that many new ant lives every day…well, it makes sense why they'd throw away their lives so willingly. Somehow, it makes me feel sad."

"What do you mean by that?"

"It's hard to explain," said Octavia. "But ants always seemed kind of selfless to me, in a way. Even in their ruthlessness for other species, each of them is willing to sacrifice themselves for the whole. It gets a lot more grim when you think about it from the perspective of a queen cranking out a thousand new ants every day, just living off a supply of endlessly disposable lives. The question is, why are all of the ants so willing to throw their lives away? Why not revolt against the queen?"

"I'm pretty sure it's genetic," I said.

"What, you think that ants are born with some kind of 'selfless gene?'"

"Actually, it's the opposite," I said. "The gene is selfish. The gene that survives is the gene that can self-replicate."

"That doesn't make any sense!" said Octavia. "A gene copies itself by making babies, right? But the ant's gene can't do that if the ant throws its life away."

I debated how much of evolutionary biology I wanted to explain to Octavia. I decided to give her the shortest explanation I knew of. "Okay, you sort of have the right idea," I said. "The gene wants to ensure that copies of itself survive. Or…really, the gene doesn't 'want' anything, but given that the only genes that survive are the ones that are good at self-replicating, at a certain point, it makes sense to treat genes as if they're driven by a desire to ensure that more copies of themselves survive."

"Alright..."

"One way to do that is by reproducing: your kids get half their genes from each parent. It's a way for your genes to pass themselves onto the next generation."

"Right," said Octavia. "That's obvious."

"But you also want your kids to survive and thrive. They inherited half of their genetic material from you. So the fact that the genes are 'selfish,' in a sense, makes it advantageous for the parents to be 'selfless' and make sacrifices for their children. The same goes for siblings: your siblings, on average, share 50 percent of their genetic material with you, but for a different reason: it's because you got your genes from the same place. You both got half your dad's genes, and you both got half your mom's genes, so on average you're 50% similar to your siblings."

"That makes sense," said Octavia. "But does something about the queen having thousands of babies mean that her genetic material gets diluted somehow?"

"No," I said. "Each female worker ant still gets 50% of her genetic material from her mom. But there's a quirk of ant reproduction that makes it so that all of the worker ants – who are genetically sisters – get the same set of genes from their father. 50% similarity of maternal genes, and 100% similarity of paternal genes, averages out to a 75% genetic similarity."

"But only for ants?"

"Right," I said. "And bees, and maybe a few other species. For most species, you have 50% genetic similarity with your siblings, but for ants, it's 75%." I wasn't sure I was prepared to fully explain the subtler points of haplodiploid sex-determination. Luckily, Octavia didn't press me too hard on the subject.

"I'll take your word for it," said Octavia. "I'm not sure why it matters, though."

"Think about it from the perspective of the genes. The selfish genes want to fill the world with copies of themselves. For a gene carried by a human — or dog, or rabbit, or a spider — the best that gene can do is to create offspring that are 50% genetically similar, and keep cranking them out: have lots of kids. But let's say that the selfish, self-replicating gene is carried by a female ant. If that ant starts having lots of ant babies, the babies will be 50% genetically similar to her — about as good as a human would be. But remember, that ant's sisters are all 75% genetically similar to her. From her genes' perspective, her ideal 'reproductive' strategy isn't to reproduce at all: it's to increase the number of sisters she has. The most important thing for that female ant is for the queen to stay alive as long as possible."

"So if I'm a worker ant, I want the queen to survive, because she's my mom. Is that what you're saying?"

"Yes," I said. "But ants care more about the survival of their mother than other species would. Because if you're an ant, as long as your mother – the queen – is around, she can create more ants that are like your genetic copies: not exact genetic copies, but they're 75% genetically similar to you. That's even closer than a child is to their parent! That's why the ants don't revolt: even if an ant revolutionary could kill the queen and install herself as a replacement, the workers that she'd give birth to would only share 50% of her genetic material.

"That, and it would be matricide," she said. "Nobody wants to kill their mother."

"I don't think the ants exactly have a tender loving relationship with their mothers," I said. "Hard for the queen to bond much with any of her offspring when she's birthing hundreds or thousands per day. It's just pure genetics. If you're a worker ant, your genes want the current queen staying in power."

"And the king ant too, obviously," said Octavia.

"Well, that's the right idea, but no," I said. "The 'king' ant doesn't stick around very long. He deposits his, er, spermatozoa, and the queen stores it so she can keep cranking out fertilized eggs after he's dead. Male ants are pretty short-lived."

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"I see…" said Octavia. "So for the common ants, all that matters is that the queen stays alive."

"Yes," I said.

"All because the gene wants to ensure that more copies of itself exist in the world."

"Pretty much," I said. "Like I said, genes don't have 'wants' or 'desires,' but it's easier to describe their behavior if you think of them as being selfish. That's what I meant when I said that the ants' selfless behavior is driven by a selfish gene."

"Do you think that we're different from the ants?" said Octavia. "Or are we just like them, slaves to our genetic programming, doing whatever will create more copies of ourselves? Because the way you say it, it sounds like selflessness only results from something deep down within us that's secretly selfish."

"You're saying that as if you think that altruism having an evolutionary basis means it's not really altruism."

"I mean, yeah," said Octavia. "I think that is what I'm saying. Doing a selfless thing for selfish reasons isn't really selfless."

I shook my head. "I don't mean to belabor the point, but the 'selfish gene' is more of a metaphor. The 'gene' doesn't really have any agency. It doesn't have dreams, or desires, or aspirations. It's just a matter of…well, certain genes survive, and others die out. Just like certain ideas survive, and certain other ideas don't get passed on. That doesn't mean that the idea had agency. If an idea is good enough that people who see it want to share it, that means it's good at 'self-replicating.' It spreads, like a meme. So in that sense, we could say that memes are 'selfish' in the same way genes are, which is to say, they're not capable of selfishness, except in the metaphorical sense."

"I think you're comparing two completely different things," Octavia said. "Ideas aren't like genes."

"Are you sure about that?" I said. "Viral ideas – memes – are literally called 'memes' because they're like genes. The term 'meme' was coined by an evolutionary biologist who was comparing the way ideas self-replicate and mutate and spread in a way similar to genes."

"But genes control our behavior," said Octavia.

"And so do ideas."

"Hmm."

"But," I said, "regardless of what genes or ideas influence us, we still have agency. We make our own choices."

"Yeah," said Octavia. "But according to you, we only developed 'altruism' because that was what would help our genes survive."

"Octavia," I said, "whenever I taste something savory, I feel pleasure because my brain releases neurotransmitters and hormones that make me feel good. There's an evolutionary basis for that: a creature that feels good whenever it eats food — and thus has a motivation to seek out food — will probably survive for longer than a creature that doesn't have this reward system wired into its brain. I enjoy savory food, because it helps me survive, which aids my genes in their mission to self-propagate. Does that mean that when I eat food, I'm experiencing 'fake pleasure?'"

"Well, when you describe pleasure, like that, you do make it sound kind of empty."

I nodded. "You can probably come up with an evolutionary basis for lots of things that we enjoy. When we spend time around people we like, it feels good, and that's caused by endorphins in the brain. It's probably because creatures are more likely to survive if they're wired with a biological reward mechanism that makes them more likely to work cooperatively in groups. The fact that I get an endorphin release from spending time with people I like doesn't mean that I'm 'fake enjoying' their company. I genuinely enjoy good company, yours included!"

"And I enjoy yours," she said "But apparently it's just because of the endorphins in my body."

"Yes, you feel good 'just because of endorphins,' and you feel the sensation of heat 'just because of thermoreceptors connected to your central nervous system,' and you detect odors 'just because of olfactory receptor neurons getting triggered in your brain.' All of these things are real. Your sense of temperature is real. The smell of a flower is real. Your feelings are real. And your sense of 'selflessness' and 'altruism?' Those are real, too. Understanding the underlying mechanism doesn't make them any less real."

"No," said Octavia. "But apparently it's because our genes are controlling us to behave in those ways. Evolution programmed us."

"I don't think that's true," I said. "I mean, genes are what cause us to be born a certain way. And with that, we inherit certain instincts, traits, and biological impulses. But we're not limited to doing the things that we're hard-coded for. Human genes adapted for surviving in an ancestral environment, picking berries and chucking pointed sticks at animals. Humans had big brains because big brains made it easier to coordinate in groups to hunt bigger prey. Evolution gave humans big brains so we could hunt wooly mammoths. And then, when evolution wasn't looking, humans used those big brains to create a society so impossibly prosperous that we created things like agriculture, and then industrialized agriculture, completely obsoleting the whole 'mammoth hunting' thing. Good thing we did, because we hunted them to extinction, with nothing but pointed sticks and good battlefield tactics. And then after we invented industrialized agriculture, we invented movies and video games and online streaming series that get canceled after two seasons. And because evolution couldn't fine-tune us, the same biological reward impulses that drove us to go out in search of calorie-rich berries and nuts drive us to sit on our couches eating Oreos, which I've been led to believe isn't the sort of activity that does a lot to enhance a person's longevity or reproductive success, and yet every day people decide to go out and do things besides that. Does any of that sound like the result of homo sapiens acting as thralls to their genetic programming? Sounds to me like humans did a pretty good job of carving their own path forward."

"And yet we are the way we are," said Octavia.

I nodded. Somehow, I felt as though I understood the meaning behind her tautology, even if I couldn't articulate it any better than she just had.

"Almost as if we were designed that way," said Octavia.

"Who designed us?" I said. "Certainly not Athena. Because I had all of these traits well before she gave me this dragon body."

"Who's Athena?" she said.

"The person who sent us here," I said. "Didn't you meet Athena?"

Octavia shook her head. "I don't think that I ever met anyone by that name."

I thought back to my first post-mortem interaction with the person – or entity – who had introduced me to this world before I'd been reborn as a dragon. I had addressed her as Athena, but she had mentioned something about that just being a useful label for people who had wanted a name to use for her.

"Maybe she told you a different name," I said. "I'm talking about the goddess who reincarnated us."

"Huh?" said Octavia. "You mean the psychopomp? The person you talked to after you died? Ferryman on the river styx, metaphorically speaking?"

"Yes," I said. "How did she introduce herself to you?"

"I don't even recall if that person was a 'she,'" said Octavia. "Or if they had a name."

"How did the conversation go?" I asked.

"I got asked a question, and I answered it, and now I'm here. The questioner didn't seem much for conversation."

"What was the question?"

"I don't even recall," she said. "It was kind of an overwhelming experience, but also, nothing really happened. I thought it was a dream at the time. To be honest, I'm still not sure it wasn't a dream. Anyway, that certainly didn't seem like a goddess to me. Did the person you spoke with ever tell you they were a goddess?"

"I don't remember," I said. "Maybe I just assumed. She created this world and reincarnated us. Sounds like a goddess to me."

"Goddess can mean a lot of things," said Octavia. "I'm a bit reluctant to start handing out the title of 'goddess' or 'god' to any entity just because it seems to be powerful. Back on earth, there were plenty of powerful leaders who claimed to be gods, or claimed to be endowed with the authority of some god or another. That doesn't mean they were. Pretty sure most of them turned out to be regular ol' mortal humans, just like us."

"I suppose not," I said. "Though, are we mortal?"

"Of course we're mortal," said Octavia. "How did you get here?"

"I had a heart attack."

"Okay," said Octavia. "Meaning you…"

"Died."

"Sounds to me like you're a mortal, then!" said Octavia.

"How many mortals get to have conversations about how they died?"

"Alright, let me put it this way," she said. "Do you have any desire to let the fire ants kill you?"

"Not particularly," I said. "In fact, I've gone to great lengths to prevent that from happening."

Octavia nodded as if I had made her point for her. "That seems like something a mortal would say. We're both still mortal, so maybe we should start acting like it."

I gave her an inquisitive look. "By which you mean…?"

"Less time talking about philosophy and science, and more time focusing on surviving."

I frowned. While the discussion on ant biology had been a bit of a conversational detour, I didn't see it as a waste of time. 'Know thy enemy,' and all that. Perhaps the significance of the ants' motivations was lost on Octavia. In fact, I wasn't sure that I understood it completely myself. But…

I said, "I think that we'll be able to deal with the ants once we understand how they operate."

"I can think of a way for you to see how they operate," said Octavia. "Let's go back to our original plan: you attack them from up above. Then hurry back. If you come fast enough, I can show you how they operate down below."

I blinked at Octavia. For several days now, I'd been left to wonder what lay within the lower tunnels, and now, she had finally suggested that I visit them myself. How could I refuse an invitation like that?

"I'd like to see what you do down there," I said. "Especially if it involves the fire ants."

"Great," she said. "Let's do this thing."

"But before I go running around outside, can I get a preview of what things look like down below?"

Octavia looked at me with confusion. 'Why would you need to see the tunnels now?" she asked "There's nothing going on down there. But if you use your breath attack on the ant nest, then there will be a lot more down there for you to observe. Don't you want to see the aftermath?"

"Yes," I said. "But I feel like I might get more out of the experience if I knew what the tunnels were like normally. That way I can get a sense of 'before and after.'"

Octavia bent her left set of legs, giving the impression of a creature cocking its head to one side. "Are you sure?" she asked. "It's pretty boring down there right now."

"Maybe it's boring to you," I said. "After all, you spend all day down there. I'm sure you've walked through those tunnels hundreds of times. But I've never seen them! No matter how boring it is to you, it'll be a new experience for me. Even if the lower tunnels turn out to be identical to the one we're in right now, that's interesting information to have."

"Well," she said, "if you're really that eager to see them, then I guess I can show you some of what's down there. But we'll have to make it quick."