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.Success!Harold’s eyes ached, dry and itchy from lack of blinking, as if they didn’t want to turn their backs on the insanity he was making them read.A cookbook on illegal genetic manipulation techniques was open on the screen in front of him, part of a big text file of forbidden knowledge he had stumbled upon in his school days.He wasn’t the only one; getting your first copy of this nonsense was a rite of passage, something the science nerds passed around for fun.Most of the material in it was pretty tame, vast tracts dedicated to recreational pharmaceuticals and surely exaggerated cautionary tales about their usage.Anything that wasn’t harmless — such as the genetic engineering section — was completely impenetrable.The section on data genes was written in some kind of mongrel, bio–mystic version of Chinese, and the translator was having a hell of a time sorting it out.Thankfully, it was heavily footnoted, explanatory notes attached by past readers, explaining their missteps.Harold knew he could probably manage what he was planning with just the footnotes alone, but still wanted to step through the original text to ensure nothing important had been omitted.He needed as full an understanding of the process as possible, because he was pretty sure he was about to break new ground in it.The location where the data would reside was critical, lest something important — perhaps the bit that stops people from growing beaks — was overwritten.This had always been done by hand, by experts — apparently strange bio–mystic Chinese experts.Harold’s plan, to program these strange instructions and logic into the gene tinkerers, had never been tried before.It was the only way his plan would work, autonomously, long after he was gone.The key to his plan was the tinkering engine, the device that stored the nanobots when they weren’t in use, maintaining their population at a fixed level.It also contained the broadcast mechanisms which imprinted the desired programming into each set of nanobots as they were prepared for a specific patient.This engine had its own logic circuits and memory, independent of the ship’s central network.The data from Kevin’s terminal could live there secretly and indefinitely, to be scribbled into the DNA of every person who ever got tinkered.Repair jobs, fetal screenings, canned babies, every one of them would end up tagged with Harold’s graffiti.This was profoundly unethical — if he got anything wrong, the amount of risk he was putting these people in was enormous.But as profoundly unethical behavior seemed to be the only way things got done on the ship, well, why not roll the dice on some beak–people?There was still the question of how to get the data out of these unsuspecting genomes once it was in there.There would be no one to explain to his subjects what had happened to them, and, hopefully, no outward sign at all that there was anything unusual about them.A very low–level genetic analysis would spot it, which was something anyone with a medical terminal could do if they saw the need to.But Harold didn’t know any diagnostic methodology that prescribed an analysis of that detail.Which meant he needed a way to provoke one of his unknowing subjects into an investigation of that depth.A beep on his terminal from Martin.His treatment completely successful, Harold had almost immediately hit the fabrication man up for the favor he had offered before entering quarantine.Martin had seemed a little surprised, obviously not having made the offer with any expectation it would be accepted.But Harold played it delicately, asking Martin to knock together a little shelving unit for his office, which he did genuinely need.He had received the shelving unit — a pretty nice one made of wood — and thanked Martin with a couple of drinks.Martin seemed happy to talk to someone with so many questions about fabrication.He reminded Harold of Kevin in a few ways.Smart, kind, slightly awkward.It was a shame to use him so utterly, but it was a small thing compared to everything else Harold was up to.Harold tapped at his terminal, reading the message.Sure, I could make flyers.But why would you want to?“An extremely good question,” Harold said, shaking his head, as he tapped a message back.It’s for a retro party thing I’m planning for a friend.Plausible enough.He set the terminal down on his desk, covering the translated nonsense that he no longer wanted to look at.He leaned back, rubbed his beard, looked down at the terminal, and sighed.“Come on, Harold,” he said, steeling himself.“You can do this.” He brushed the terminal to the side of the desk and leaned back in over the cookbook.Ghosts are the retrotransposons — tread wisely with enormous canons best left unused?“Oh, come on,” he said, eyes widening.“Now you’re just fucking with me.”Chapter 8: Come Get Your GunsLeroy fidgeted as the gun made its way down the line.He wanted it.Why didn’t they have more to go around? He was pretty sure the guy had said something about that.He hadn’t really been listening at the time, had probably been looking at the gun.No, scratch that.No probably about it.He had been looking the fuck out of that gun.He had no time for listening — even his ears were looking at that gun.A moment of self doubt washed over Leroy
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Tematy
IndexCidney Swanson [Saving Mars Saving Mars (epub)
Christine Wood [Life Plan 01] A Life Plan Without You (epub)
Cheryl McIntyre [Infinitely Infinitely (epub)
Clair Delaney [Coral 01] Coral (epub)
Christine Cody [Bloodlands 01 Bloodlands (epub)
Christina Ross [Unleash Me, A Unleash Me, Vol 3 (epub)
Christine Flynn [The Hunt for Once Upon a Christmas Eve (epub
Christian Fletcher [The Left Left on the Brink (epub)
Christopher G Nuttall [Royal The Royal Sorceress (epub)
Asimov, Isaac Gwiazdy jak pył