Zed has been living with Grandfather and Fritz in the southern Aerodomes for as long as she can remember. She is a precocious fifteen-year-old girl where our story picks up, and loves to pick Grandfather’s brain for all of its Engineering and general knowledge. Belying great natural aptitude, Zed often quickly picks up whatever she is taught, and is left even more curious for more. She has a particular interest in biology, both human and bot, and it is conceivable that she would make a very good Medic if not an Engineer like Grandfather.

While Zed has yet very little knowledge about the Neo-World, the other Caissans, and the details of the bot rule, she absolutely loves to ask Grandfather about the Before-times. She has an endless curiosity for how the humans once lived, what their lives were like, and likes to daydream about how she would have gone about living in such a world. She also has an interest in the more technological and scientific aspects of the history, and perhaps it is only a coincidence that she prefers these tales as bedtime stories.

Zed also asks Grandfather about his own life and the After-times, although he is rather more reticent on this subject (and on other, closely related ones). Zed is driven and inquisitive to an extent that is rare among the other human-children, even the offspring of great Engineers and Medics. She has a vivid imagination, boundless ambition, and wishes to one day understand all the intricacies of Neo-World, its sciences, its mysteries and secrets. She is not sure if this is even possible, for a human, although she would be happy to one day be even as wise and knowledgeable as is Grandfather.

Of her many hobbies and pursuits, Zed has a particular interest in two: gardening, and tinkering. She loves to attempt inventions of her own, and was in fact the genius behind Fritz’s display panel upgrade.

While she has not yet gotten around to picking up an interest in chess, she is interested in puzzles, riddles, and other logical games. She enjoys, in particular, a good Su-do-ku, and has begun teaching herself the game of Go. Gardening is an important counterpoint to her other, more cerebral pass-times, because the garden is where she retreats to when she needs to calm her emotions and gather her composure. Yes, she is an extremely sensitive and emotional human, and while it sometimes gets her into arguments and into a spell of melancholy, this trait of hers is unquestionably a strength, and a merit.

Sometimes, when the sky is dark, the winds are still and the night is particularly lonely, Zed thinks about her parents, struggles to remember whatever she can about them and wonders where they might be right in that moment.