i think between "zosia is real/will be real and separate from the hivemind" and "there's no zosia it's just the hive" we have another option to explore: the character of zosia is real, and that will matter.
she was sent by the hivemind as a medium to manipulate and control carol with, and they based her on raban—a fictional character carol herself created.
even with carol trying her best to keep those concepts separated, our brains don't really work that way. fiction and reality, especially emotionally, aren't processed differently, it's the same neurochemistry.
so, to carol, the more she interacts with the character of zosia (particularly when there's no one else around), the more real she becomes. after a month of literal torture—isolation like that is a war crime and outlawed by the geneva convention—she's desperate for human connection.
zosia's body is real, she reacts to her the way one does to another human being, and carol getting herself out of the probably psychotic state she is in will take time. spending time with zosia will only solidify the character of her, though.
taking all of that, i think it's interesting to imagine how the same events will affect "zosia". the hivemind's plurality hasn't erased any personal information or destroyed their brains—we know it can be reversed. any changes are not permanent.
so what if ONE human body with one human brain is suddenly physically separated from the hive?
from what we have seen, the hivemind works together, they're one big organism, i doubt any member is isolated from the rest of them. they even sent three bodies to talk to manousos in the middle of the jungle, we see them move as a group, a swarm.
imagine, zosia and carol, alone in one big city, one of them playing a character, the other reinforcing the idea of the character. a mutual exchange of information, language, physical contact. blurring the lines between fiction and reality, between wishful thinking and actual possibility.
just separating one human from the rest wouldn't be enough to fundamentally change anything. but what if you help them redefine their individuality? what if you have the idea of a person and keep reinforcing it, expanding it?
what if you touch them just to touch, not to fulfill a task? call them by their name, eat with them, have FUN with them?
i doubt the hivemind cuddles, i doubt they have meals together, i doubt they live the way human society did, they don't need to. they drink human protein slush out of milk cartons, they don't sit down to have meals. they purée everything and consume it while performing detached maintenance. they don't talk to each other, any "real" humanity is performed for the survivors and dropped the second they look away. humans need play, they need interaction, they need creativity.
so what if, without meaning to, in treating zosia like an individual, she becomes one again? not the same she was before, but someone new. an unimportant cog in the machine that can suddenly make choices for itself again.
a theatrical role (created for a person) that was fictional right up until it wasn't.
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