January 31, 2138 (Early Evening)

The drama from this morning has made everything tense around the zoo. I think we all felt like the battle was over and we had just made it home. Then another battle had just begun right in front of us that all of us should have expected, yet nobody saw it coming. Tad's been carrying all of this resentment all of this time and threw it in every direction that he could this morning. I feel like I should be saying things to him to try and fix this, but I'm not sure what to say or how to approach him now. He's been resting all day and the others seemed to get him stable again. Sarah has stayed with him most of the day, and Kim is afraid to let him have any kind of a weapon for fear of him trying to use it on the girl we brought back here.

Dad and Kim have locked her up in one of the indoor cages in a small building that was meant for displaying smaller animals, but we've been using it to store some things. I'm going to take her some food soon, but Dad and Kim wanted to talk to her and have been doing so for about an hour now. I'm worried about how that's going. Besides wanting to grill her for information, Kim seems particularly concerned about what the deal is with her left eye. From what I've gotten so far she's worried that it might be some kind of a weapon. She admits that it's unlikely, but she doesn't want to find out that she's escaped and then realize that it was something that she could use to free herself all along. Or allow her to have a weapon that she could use on one of us. Due to this there's been someone with her standing guard all day.

Like Kim's military uniform, the Dread Youth girl wore one also. However, it didn't have her name printed on it anywhere and it was gray in color instead of tan. She wore a gray hat with a red stripe running across it and a Biodread Empire symbol attached to it. As dedicated as she appeared to be by the uniform she was wearing, it made me wonder how Dad or Kim would get her to tell them anything. Even during Tad's enraged episode she didn't run away. She was worried, but stayed there as though it was her duty to do so. If she had this much of a sense of loyalty to the enemy how would they break through this and get her to talk?

January 31, 2138 (Evening)

I while ago I went to give our new guest some food. Karl and Tommy were both guarding the room she was in. It will be that way or another hour until Dad and Kim go to have their talk with her. I'll get to go back then and stand guard over her while they do their thing and the two guys take a break to get supper.

Upon arriving at her room both Karl and Tommy told me to be careful. Karl opened the door as Tommy stepped in first with a laser in his hand. Holding the plate with the food we prepared for her kept me from easily being able to defend myself if I needed to, so he stayed in the room until I gave it to her. I walked up to her and said, "I'm sorry if this isn't what you're used to, but it's what we have here." She took the plate from me and looked back at me and said, "Thank you." Then she stared at it or a about half a minute. After about fifteen seconds of watching her looking at the plate I asked her if something was wrong, but she didn't reply. After my question was asked I noticed her close her normal eye and continue staring at the plate with the eye with the yellow colored pupil. This lasted or a few seconds before she opened the other one and continued to look at the food I gave her. After the thirty seconds she seemed satisfied to go ahead and eat some of it. Most of it was fish that we keep catching when we take some time and apples, which seem plentiful around here what with all of the trees around. It didn't seem to be what the food was that she was looking at though, but more like what she thought we might have done to it before giving it to her.

Once she had eaten a couple of bites she looked at me and said, "Are you here to interrogate me?"

"No. But I'd like to know what your name is so that I can quit referring to you as that girl," I replied.

She hesitated to answer for a few seconds as she continued to look at me. Finally she said, "Youth Leader Rachel"

"I'm just going to call you Rachel if you don't mind," I said back.

She didn't reply to this as though she wasn't really that keen on me calling her by her name only, and she looked away and started eating the food again. After seeing her face in the lighted room and getting a better look at her eyes I could see both of them better. The eye with the yellow pupil looked as though it had three or four yellow points extending out from the pupil inside of the cornea. Somewhat like a star would look like if it were trapped in her eye and I couldn't avoid asking her about it any longer.

"You can feel free not to answer this if you want to, but I was wondering what's wrong with your left eye. Is it damaged in some way," I asked.

"There's nothing wrong with it," she replied.

"Why is it the color that it is then. That's not normal," I said to her.

She looked back at me again and said, "It's been purged of a weakness and enhanced."

"What weakness," I asked.

"I used to have a type of macular dystrophy in it. I was losing my vision in it and most likely would have lost my vision in the other eye as well. The Dread Empire saved my vision. I was given a macular implant that regenerates any damage to my eyes. It also enhances what I can see and gives me vision that organics can't have. It gives me superiority over organics and is a reward for serving the will of the machine," she replied.

"Machines don't have willpower. People do," I replied.

"Is that what you believe? If that were true, why is it that people like you are living in a zoo like animals while the Dread Empire lives on and continues to forge a world of perfection," she asked.

"There's nothing in this world that's perfect. Especially life, but that's what we have. That's what we're given and it's supposed to be imperfect. We were given the ability to learn to get around those things that aren't perfect," I said.

"There are things in what you call life that can't be gotten around or fixed without the machine. No matter how stupid you might or might not be, no organic can deny that. Organics don't want to accept that because they feel inferior to machines because of this fact. When in reality organics should have accepted this a long time ago. For years we've been saved and lead by machines. And all the while organics thought that machines were serving them," she replied.

"And just who made those machines, Rachel? Another machine? And another? Well, if you keep going back in time and look really hard at what begat what long enough, sooner or later you run out of what begat what and start running into who begat what. And then who begat who. Machines wouldn't be here if not for humans. Imperfect humans created machines years ago. People created machines. Those same flawed people were brought about by to other flawed people that were their parents. Parents that loved them," I said back to Rachel.

"Emotions are wrong and evil. They're the roots of destruction," she claimed.

"Love brought us both into this world," I argued.

"Emotions were the undoing of your male teammate this morning," she came back at me with.

"An injury was his undoing, not his emotions. He's physically hurt and needs rest that he's not getting," I replied.

"If he didn't resist like the rest of you and gave himself to the will of the machine, he wouldn't be injured like he is right now. Like my physical damage, his could be repaired or wouldn't have ever existed to begin with. It's a part of evolution to become one with the machine," she said back to me.

"If it weren't for his emotions, his love for my sister and him putting himself through the injuries that he has, my sister would be dead right now. Another flawed person that feels that thing that you deny yourself called love kept another person alive that he loves. How is that bad," I asked.

"Love can lead to hatred. Hatred leads to destruction and death. Machines don't hate. People do. Like the male teammate you have from this morning. He hates me, whether he knows why or not. He would have killed me if it weren't for his own injuries stopping him and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Any other time than today and his hatred of me would have lead to my death. There's no logic behind that at all. No sense, just another emotion that's left uncontrollable to take the life of another person that never did anything to him," she said.

"I don't hate you and I don't hate any of your friends, yet that didn't stop you and your friends from attacking us in the mall. It didn't stop any of you from shooting at us and trying to kill us. It doesn't stop your biodread allies from trying to kill us. Don't you remember, those machines that don't hate? It doesn't stop them from trying to kill all of us and it didn't stop another Dread Youth that talks about how emotions are evil from killing that boy's mother. My friend has a name. It's Tad, and his mother is dead because of someone in a uniform like yours. A uniform that you say stands for logic and a perfect world where humans are supposed to evolve into something better. Well, if that's so true then why is your type still killing others even though you say that you don't hate," I asked.

She paused without an answer, and before she could offer one Tommy stepped back in to check up on me. He opened the door and say, "Amber, is everything all right?"

"Yeah, everything is fine," I said back to Tommy as he walked up to me and put his hand on my shoulder. Rachel looked at us without ever responding to what I had asked her, and Tommy said, "Come on, let's go." He kissed the side of my head and she just sat there taking it all in without speaking any longer. Then we turned and left her to eat her food.