It's like a story thread that has been edited out from Borne. It's interesting to read it, but it's definitely to the benefit of Borne to not have included the story of the Strange Bird.

The overarching feeling of helplessness is even stronger here. I felt helpless about this theme. In Borne there were rays of sunshine poking through the clouds, but not so much this time. So I was not sure how to process it.

One way to fit these thoughts into my mind I found was to think of building artificial intelligences. I think they would be the closest in real life to the sentient biotech animals of Jeff VanderMeer. We are happy to train, re-train, glue together, and slice up our neural networks to fit the task of the day. That's all fine until they are objects and not people. But they already are more people-like than a toothbrush or a chair. It's a spectrum.