"One of the very first friends I made at the Tower was a replica." Asch's tone remains even, though with a faint of stubbornness. Jay wouldn't understand the meaning of the comment, but Dist will; Dist knows that Asch doesn't do friends at all, much less replicas or anything of the sort. "I don't care anymore. You're not different enough for me to treat you any differently except that you picked up some idiot idea of what it means to be a real person. You're here and your memories are at least enough in order that you know our common history, so what, exactly, makes you any less real than any other version of you I could stumble across?"

This is, without a doubt, the first time that Asch has actually cared enough about Dist to give him a lecture.