But she is not foolish, in no need of forgiveness. She speaks politely, but Machiko cannot regard her words with a settled spirit. It is a mother's duty to care for her child, and but for the single act of conception, a moment in time, they are truly mother and child. Machiko knows this for a fact. She was adopted not as a child or infant. Her original biological parents, both elves, were killed in a terrorist bombing, but the egg from which she evolved had been previously stored in a vault at a fertility clinic. When her true parents decided, out of loyalty to the Chairman's New Way, to adopt a metahuman child, they selected her egg, and this was medically implanted in the womb of the woman beside her now, her true mother in both flesh and spirit.