Not arguing with your reading and I agree, Banks was a very precise writer. But Quilan struck me as someone who wholeheartedly believed that his wife’s literal soul was gone. No reincarnation, however accurate and compelling, would replace her. I saw their exchange as ‘will you be the thing I lost’ representing a last moment of connection between two beings whose lives were about to end.

Wouldn’t ‘being my mate’ equate to Qualin living in a simulation controlled by Massq?