Lucy and Aure

The dynamic between Lucy, a human girl, and Aure, the ruler of the futuristic society, is the central driving arc in The Birthday Present. Aure was the special pet project of Lucy’s father, his creation. Since Lucy, his daughter, is also her father's creation, Aure is Lucy’s brother in a way. But he is a GMF, the enemy of the humans, and Lucy is the main force for trying to get rid of GMFs, so they are always at odds. Their relationship shows the essential closeness that underlies antagonism. We can only fight that much with someone to whom we are actually very close.

Lucy comes to the GMF world out of touch. She expects the GMFs to revere humans as their creators however much they try to overthrow them, but finds the opposite. GMFs don’t even remember the ancient situations she is talking about and hold humans in low estimation. During Aure’s rule he has actually changed the world and created something new. That old war doesn’t exist anymore. Lucy came from the distant past before finding a small colony of humans who also have outdated thinking, and she truly is living in a time warp.

Lucy finds she’s not viewed as a heroine. She’s a weird interloper who is trying to mess things up. Only Aure even knows who her father was—so he’s the only one who understands what she’s trying to do. She wants to get rid of GMFs, as part of a conversation nobody cares about now, and strangely the leader of the GMFs is the only one who really sees where she’s at. Even the other humans, locked in their hideout of Santau, think she’s a wart. It’s strange that she’s focused on Aure as the enemy when he’s the one person who truly understands her. She finds Aure threatening and nobody else does, actually. Because those who are so close to us also hold great power over us and sometimes we dislike them for that very reason.

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