<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Theresa had long since lost the android patrol, but she was still on the move. She had to admit, the robots weren't very bright, but that was because they were limited only by thier programming. Unlike them, Theresa was free to use abstract thought, independant of any programming she'd recieved - that was the advantage of a living organism over a robot. It was also what made Theresa so valuable. The ultimate life-form, her kind was called. The ultimate merger of man and machine that would eventually replace humans as the dominant form of life.<br/><br/>It wasn't that Theresa didn't like having a computer built into her head nor a mechanical hand - all her cybernetic parts were useful - it was the principle of the matter: she was a carbon-based <span style="font-style: italic">life</span>-form of bone, blood, and tissue; not a mechanical construct of steel, hydraulic fluid, and silicone. Yet that was what Kairos would have her be, if Theresa's transponder hadn't gone out. I'm a human, not a machine, she kept telling herself.<br/><br/>So far, she had not needed to use her electronic equipment. She kept her reciever on in case more androids came into range, but turned off everything else. There was enough light tonight to forego her nightvision filter, and with it the other features of her lenses. She moved through the woods with the speed and agility of a human rather than a robot - complete with stumbling on obstacles hidden by shadows. She almost stumbled over the sleeping form of a boy ((Clover)) slumped against a tree.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">What in the world</span>? Theresa asked herself. She tapped the tiny contact stud sticking out of her temple to turn on her lenses, then turned to inspect the boy fully. She could make out his features much better with her nightvision filter. He looked asleep, and human, not android. Sure enough, when she scanned for a transponder, she got no signal. She labelled him "Human Boy" on her display.<br/><br/>"What are you doing in the forest at night?" she asked his sleeping form, though she was more thinking aloud than expecting an answer. She knelt down to try and awaken him and perhaps get an answer for real.</span>