The Agency

The Agency represents a potential future for humanity that is overrun by technology and has completely lost touch with the natural world. Red, a member of the Agency, describes how she can take the forms of different bodies and faces, showing that, in the far future in this novel, humans have evolved past the need for one single body and can take many forms. The Agency seems to act as a sort of caution against becoming so overly reliant on technology.

The Garden

The Garden is a symbol for another way that humanity could evolve, which is to become even more reliant on the natural world and eventually get subsumed into it. Blue, who grew up in the Garden, describes how she has somehow become different parts of the natural world as she grew up. She can shapeshift too, but there is not much modern...