Page 803 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"Into what?"
"Into chaos. Darkness. Disorder. Whatever they were before this universe brought them together. Why couldn't they-- we-- have always existed and always continue to exist?"
"So where was I between the beginning of the universe and the day I was born?" said Miro.
"I don't know," said Ender. "I'm making this up as I go along."
"And where did Jane come from? Was her philote just floating around somewhere, and then suddenly she was in charge of a bunch of computer programs and she became a person?"
"Maybe," said Ender.
"And even if there's some natural system that somehow assigns philotes to be in charge of every organism that's born or spawned or germinated, how would that natural system have ever created Jane? She wasn't born."
Jane, of course, had been listening all along, and now she spoke. "Maybe it didn't happen," said Jane. "Maybe I have no philote of my own. Maybe I'm not alive."
"No," said Miro.
"Maybe," said Ender.
"So maybe I can't die," said Jane. "Maybe when they switch me off, it's just a complicated program shutting down."
"Maybe," said Ender.
"No," said Miro. "Shutting you off is murder."
"Maybe I only do the things I do because I'm programmed that way, without realizing it. Maybe I only think I'm free."
"We've been through that argument," said Ender.
"Maybe it's true of me, even if it isn't true of you."
"And maybe not," said Ender. "But you've been through your own code, haven't you?" "A million times," said Jane. "I've looked at all of it."
"Do you see anything in there to give you the illusion of free will?"
"No," she said. "But you haven't found the free-will gene in humans, either."