Like Poul Anderson's The Peregrine and World Without Stars, this is a future when Earth is sparsely populated and:
"...the immense forest...had returned with the end of agriculture." (p. 79)
And death returns as an issue. Avi reflects on what life was like before human bodies could be endlessly duplicated and rejuvenated:
"'A few years, and then age and feebleness and death.' She shuddered. 'Death! Nothingness! Not even the world can exist when one is dead. Not when you've no brain left to know about it. Just - nothing. As if you had never been! Haven't you ever been afraid of the thought?'" (p. 81)
The world does exist when we are dead and when we do not know about it. We do not fear the thoughts either that we did not exist before we were born or that we do not exist in most places now! Surely someone who has been is different from someone who has never been? We are neither fictional characters nor unrealized genetic combinations. Can anyone calculate the number of the latter? We exist where and when we exist. There is nothing to fear about the times and places when/where we do not exist.
But "To be or not to be..." is an ultimate question, the beginning of Hegelian philosophy - and maybe of quantum mechanics?
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