“Customer knew the risks; everyone is told don’t Junk yourself too often or you end up being Junked. We just have to begin recovery procedures; he then has to pay for the alterations again.”
Dank calmly drank dark rum out of an old Blackmore’s coffee cup, his white hair seemed natural and his good looks could either be Junked in or natural. Dank slowly bushed the ash from Foley’s cigarette of his khaki pants and stood up only coming up to the bottom of obsidian giant’s breasts.
“That’s balls, and you know it why don’t we just squirt the shit right in there and alter the main template. That way, we can get them to try stuff and roll back to where they last saved their template.” She waived salami sized hands at Dank, the calm almost dead expression in his eyes told her he was not in the slightest bit intimidated by her.
“That’s a great idea, why haven’t I thought of that being the genius who made the technology you would think I would have. Grow up Foley, and sit down”
Foley slumped in the couch, a hurt expression in her deep red eyes.
“We keep their original code for a very specific reason; a species is defined by its ability to bread with other members of its species. The original code is what allows that to happen; it’s the template for our human species. If we squirt into the templates, people will drift the separation will be almost total within two generations. It’s also been shown that culturally we tend to become conservative every 2nd or 3rd generation, and this swing leads to a great shedding of new thinking and values and a return to grass roots. Such a swing is getting likely now; we have seen the movements of people like the naturals; return of the faiths etc. The truth is your client is going to want to reproduce at some point and to do so we have to assist them as their genetic code is so radically different from that of whomever their partner is that a union could only happen with created material derived from the template.”
Dank began to pace behind his desk and picked up an old pipe, and began sucking on it as if he was some scientist in an old movie.
“Why can’t we have two templates for each client? I mean we could get them to pay for more storage isn’t it all just data?” She shouted still angry that her requests were rejected, and defiant that he had made her sit down.
“There is a component which is just data, however a complete copy of all genetic material is kept on every human world, the cost to replicate that and the time to replicate altered versions is too prohibitive. We physically send the original template to each planet.”
“So what’s the recovery procedure; I have never done one and this client is a VIP” Foley started to get up but then thought better of it.
“VIP, you client is the owner of an advertising company that spans one world. Sure maybe on that world he is rich but he is hardly important. The fact that he is now some sort hard cartilaginous mass sprouting copper hairs, made of real copper I might add and oozing a strange viscous green mucous suggests to me that you have not been recording all alterations, and this is maybe his one hundredth or more. There is a reason we record each alteration and send it back to planetary HQ.”
Dank put the pipe down on the shelf and played with some of the items there. His rumpled shirt made him look like some sort of painter from the impressionist period mixed with a sardonic Jazz musician from the 1970’s. The delusions of reality had faded from his ancient frame replaced by a calm grace that only came with complete understanding of human frailty.
“He will have to be reverted to this point here, just when he got his gills, new liver and mucous and he will have to stay that way.” Risking anything else will mean that we would lose his mind; his genes can be Junked to that point but no further.
“That’s like only thirty procedures, he will be ruined everyone will call him norm. That’s fashion from five years ago when water sports were in.”
Dank swept his hair back and calmly sat at his desk he punched in a few key strokes on his ancient computer. “That’s all I can do for him. Genetics is not fashion, it’s who we are it’s a fundamental.”
He gazed at the giant sitting on his couch, his clear grey eyes studying the upgrades she had, maybe close to fifty Junking sessions.
“Foley, you do another unlisted procedure ill strip you of all your upgrades. Now please leave my office and get this paper work done, he is likely to die in a few days if we don’t recover.”
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