the intended horror of the story was that sapience/consciousness is a genetic oddity that is likely nowhere else to be found in the universe. the true horror in the current day is that it clearly isn't even that common among humanity itself. have you ever experienced "highway hypnosis," where you are driving a car along some road you've driven a hunded times before, blink, and find yourself at your destination, with minutes of time completely vanishing and no recollection of how you got there? that empty space of time where the soul was sent back to the the void and not observing the actions of your body is the default state for most of the species. i also found it amazing how when the crew was "communicating" with rorschach in a way that was written to demonstrate the concept of the "chinese room," it sounded exactly like chatgpt, like every botted shill post, like the majority of third worlder posts on the internet.
Canada