Recovery Procedure

“He arsed it up!” Shouted Foley at Dank orange and green dreads waiving in the air with the briskness of her statement, coal black wrinkled skin shining with a slippery membrane.

“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.”

Junker

As I climbed the outer crater wall of Thasis city; everything changed for me. The world kept turning at 868.22 kilometres per hour but my internal world careened out of control. The steep climb reminded me of the struggle to get here; the many tumbles down the slope mirrored my tumble. With careful method, I had become a monster, and the man who did this with me now stood over me with a predatory gaze. I had tried to do something terrible. I thought it was the right thing to do; like many terrorists before me, here and back on earth in years gone by; I had justified every soul-destroying decision believing I was dragging humanity forward.

Minks, my long time friend and mentor stooped over me, his long, lean form glinting in the Martian sunrise. That the messenger was Minks - my comrade, my brother - hurt the most. Gently, he took my small, personal canister of poison. Meekly, I let him. I feel like a kid whose big brother breaks all his toys; hopelessly crying for my parents. They aren't listening, they stopped listening long ago, or maybe I stopped crying and hadn’t noticed. My work was wasted, the self I had been was lost on an ocean and no one was looking for me.

Remembering my sister’s birthday, the first time I met him. He told me about his plans to change the world; told me I was good at what I did, he encouraged my creative side. Together, as we worked, we felt like gods striding across a new frontier, the work was all we could think about. Nothing else mattered. Slowly I lost all my other friends; then I lost my family. I was arrested, and bailed out; I committed crimes against the state, against people, against anyone and everything. Maybe even against nature. Minks, the others and myself had been Junkers: a new form of revolutionary - we changed ourselves and the world around us. That was our need, and our instinct.

Minks was older than me, wiser and even more screwed up. He picked me for my innocence, my naiveté. I was a hacker of sorts: I adjusted the ‘code’ of living tissue rather than computer programs. There were only a few of us doing it and Minks had picked me for his gang. How the technology worked or what I did is not important, what is important is that we thought, no – we knew it was the new frontier of human civilization. Together we would change humanity. Now, lying on the cusp of this dry, dead crater with Minks gazing down at me, the disappointment of my failure is as barren as the alien, crimson dust of this long-dead planet, which is greedily soaking up my rapidly freezing blood. We were the vanguard of human civilization; on the broken edge of science playing with powers we just had an understanding of…

…The human race was not ready to accept genetic manipulation. There were riots for and riots against. The UN created special economic zones on mars to allow the technology to be researched and tested. The technology was simply abhorrent to many people. Big business had invested trillions in the research but the only items that were accepted were cloned organs to extend life. People just didn't want to change; that's where we fit in.

Junkers took the broken science and used it. We changed ourselves to prove it could be done. To show the world what humanity could be, and in changing, in demonstrating what humans could be, we no longer were. We didn't know that then, and maybe we wouldn't have cared anyway. Junkers were a force; a movement for change: we weren’t just trying to bring change, we wanted to become change.

When heat builds up in a system, steam escapes with a blast, usually a pressure valve is used but sometimes there are leaks and the leaks explode. We were the leaks in the system; people who were living on the edge, and with the nothing we thought we had to lose we were able to show others what was possible. This, I discovered, was our function: to show mankind that genetic manipulation was not only possible in a living being but also Natural Selection.

Mink's had become so charmed by his own existence; that his charm just rubbed off like scales from a butterfly. He sprinkled his fairy dust around and others followed him. People like me, a new and naive kid genius ready for the next big thing. I, we, would follow him around and hang on his every word. I remember once how he got on to some talk show, about troubled teens who were followers of this new "Junker movement" he stated plainly:

"Junker is not only cool, its liberating; imagine being able to fly in space on solar wings, that's where we will be one day and you'll all be dead. Because some Luddites don't understand doesn't mean the UN can pass restrictions. I'm not condoning the attacks on protos like you. I am saying that change has come and you can either embrace it; or get out of our way."

It was not long after this point we became fugitives, attack on protos by Junkers had increased and we felt squeezed into a corner. We never ran from it, we ran into it and fought back, the cops, the army, our parents, our siblings if you didn’t have the scent and look you were walking meat and we never cared. Minks told everyone to take it up a notch and we complied. That charm still so strong, even though he could no longer be recognised as human or even ‘Minks’ anymore. Thousands followed us in the ether, and news casts. Protos wanted to be like us: different from the Protos, they wanted a standard package to get started. Enhanced eyes and ears, better brawns and more smarts. Bands started doing it, brawing out or getting really crazy with scales and feathers. They flocked to the cause and protested in their schools and colleges demanding a lift of the bans. Overnight instead of a ‘movement’ we became fashion, there were labels of clothes and bands, and all the paraphernalia associated with all fashion and fads. Still we kept striving, searching for the waterfall to jump off.

Minks still so charming, was smiling now. I remember him saying “Tommy, those Proto fuckers should give you a noble prize, you’re a fucking genius”. We worked so hard to achieve acceptance, I never realised just how popular our movement would become. It seemed serendipity that bands came out, with music we liked, clothing just as we wanted it to look, and more people to indulge in the change with us. Minks pops something into my pocket a small thing, white with letters on it. “Rest up Tommy, the war is over; I called an ambulance for you, your going to get a nice room, I booked it in this nice clinic by the sea you’ll like the sea we don’t have oceans on Mars. When you’re better; I got a job for you to. Can you still sing Tommy; there is this benefit for the victims of the poison. I said I would bring some Junkers to sing this old song “We are the World”. It’s going to be all over the ether on all the casts. Lots of normals’ will be watching; it’s a big deal. Hey Tommy, do you think before the gig, you can do something about my teeth; I want them to be blue now, you know to go with my eyes.”

He pushes more stuff into my pockets, a data stick labelled songs to learn. I look at the small item in my shirt pocket; it’s a simple white card with his name Michael Minkins director of marketing Sibel and Dawn.

Junker

Junker by Morg

I thought I was a Junker! it was a sham. We started in 2320, tearing up streets like a bunch of wild dogs looking for a scrap. Junkers; because we altered our code and embraced the change. Junk clinics were found in most cities small time doctors playing with anything’s code for a small price and an open source license to the results. In those days the rain came down off the top of the craters on Olympus Mons as a fine mist; before we trashed the atmosphere plants that is.

Looking back on that time I have fond memories, mostly my own or Minks or the rest of my Junker crew. Junkers were a group of miscreants who turned into a movement then slowly faded into obscurity some 200 years ago. They didn't really stand for anything in hindsight, merely a force for change.

I was recruited by the legendary Minks, a long running cyborg with a diamond carbide chassis. He had customized his code so that he didn't need to sleep, needed less nutrients for his organs and enhanced his brain capacity. On Mars, free market meant no guidelines as long as you didn't break the basics of human rights you could do anything. Most of the humans or Protos as we called them were part machine already but no one wanted to go too far; to fuck with their own code I mean.

Brain and body hacking turned into a lucrative small business but when a few virus like the Red Plague broke out that was stopped. The UN put the Kibosh on the small clinics and start-up auto-factories, replacing the grimy dirty world I was used to with the clean white lines of Berkley Genomics clinics. It was a brutal battle, a big corporation out maneuvered by smaller faster companies on the broken edge of science and then the retaking of the science by using the heavy hand of big government. Who knows how many Protos and Nexters lost their savings and lives. When the dust settled, there were no small clinics; the geniuses who created the tech had been swallowed up by a monster; a system spanning conglomerate Berkley Genomics.

Junkers were a particularly violent type of Nexter, or Next human. They prided themselves on being free, being vandals; totally anti corporation, anti government and almost anti Proto. My gang would regularly tear up a street in downtown Berlin district in Olympus Mons just for the fun of it; spraying poison gas into air conditioners then shooting people as they ran out of corporate towers. We were like young gods striding around the terrified Protos, showing our power and smashing anything in our way. Once we even launched our own com sats just to stay ahead of the Police and Interpol.

This is a rags to riches story, with the hero my horrible self. Back then I wore spiked shoulder pads, had servos added to my arms could leap fifty feet into the air and cling to any surface like a gecko. I could see into the ultra violet and infrared spectrum thanks to my custom coded eyes. My weapons, electro mags built into the muscles of buttocks and thighs to take out most machines and cyborgs; who knew that with a bit of tinkering you could give a nasty jolt using an electric eels DNA. Chainsaw was my normal weapon, simple effective noisy. I liked the sound it made as it crunched through bone and flesh. I also could release a powerful toxin in my saliva that would kill most creatures; stopping their heart, dissolving flesh, leaving them with a fatal blood infection and a slow and malignant cancer. Junkers were a rare breed indeed, like so many we eventually became extinct.

Minks was always pushing us hard to do more an more damage, eventually we ended up breaking the terra-forming equipment that kept the creator growing. We distributed a virus through the atmospheric pylons, the viral fungal bacterial Soup thingy we made was so deadly to the plants and microbes of the soil that they never fixed it. We sent the code over to people in Tharsis and they did the same thing. It wasn't about a better weapon, or doing damage it was mainly about the challenge. How to literally hack the planet, our burgeoning red world would become a strange and alien land. We weren't just mad we were furious, mankind had left earth to colonized other stars. We were left here on Mars. Slaves to thousands of corporations, consumers of all the goods of our human systems, never to see an alien sky or swim in the stars. We had missed out, born to late for the colonies, too early for the expansion and too poor to get off world with no wars to fight we fought our fellow man. Junkers were rebels and with a cause, fuck up yourself then fuck everyone else up.

A Junker was usually recruited early around the age of eleven or twelve, usually by an older brother or sister. Most of the Junkers in my gang only had an age difference of about three years. The first time I met Minks was at my older sisters birthday, they were lovers. Minks saw I had a great imagination, and could code in a few programming languages best of all I knew how the Splicers worked, and could program them too. Programming for me was like a hobby I would make little games and little hacks to impress my friends at school. I was so happy when Minks turned up at my parents place with a Crown 2200 starter lab. The first of the small labs that started up a chain hacks for the decade. The thing looked like bar fridge. It had all sorts of components and even came with a subscription to the Crown Geno site, allowing you to buy ready made hacks for your plants, the thing couldn't deal with humans; until I broke its protection software and realized you could do pretty much anything with it. I started by hacking my cat, turning it scaly. Then eager as always hacked my own code turning my skin blue.

When Minks saw what I did he said I should run with his gang. He had big plans, me being a gene hacker one of only about one hundred at the time would fit right in. I started by adding dog DNA to some of the gang, then increased their muscle density by eight times.

After about a year the gang looked like nothing Mars had ever seen. Some of them were hulking brutes others chameleon skinned ninjas, Minks just got me to hack his brain because that’s all he had left after all the surgery for cybernetics. I'm pretty sure at that point our code was un-recoverable, nothing normal remained everything was tweaked, enhanced or stripped. My own sister now had full-size angel wings; they didn't let her fly she was pretty scary to look at standing eight feet tall wielding a chainsaw. When the cops gunned her down outside our school we made a pact, to stick together, to fight back and fuck everything up. I picked up the chainsaw and with it became second in command. Our goons would steal medical supplies, animals from the zoo, specimens from museums any piece of code we could get our hands on. It wasn’t just genetic manipulation, any piece of tech that furthered our cause, to take revenge for being left on Mars; for my sister for my friends.

The police were a natural enemy, I remember two of our guys busting open an armored car outside Berlin university, blood spraying out like it was fired from a hose. Things really got weird when we cracked the code to share feelings and emotions. Normally links only transmit contextual data as data like a normal computer; there is an interface between the brain and the link chip. You can grab an image from your optic buffer if you have mechanical eyes, or audio from your ears and also transmit text or sometimes speech. What we did was break that wide open, I’m sure the Crown boys who invented it had put it there to stop people doing that. We shared our feelings, our memories reading and writing to each other’s brains like they were drives on pirate servers. After that I think we lost all sense of who we were. We were not one, we were many, and we had a satellite; wherever we went we were never alone.

The movement gained momentum; clinics opened up to help other people join in the revolution it was out with the old and in with the new. They were pretenders who were only skimming the surface, not diving right in. Junker became a fashion label; something the rich kids would do to be cool tearing up a street or causing mayhem while messaging everyone in the area to make sure no one got hurt. It felt like we were being contained, the clinics did a good trade in “enhancements” usually nothing more radical than night vision, or no sleep. Things we have now days, were invented and produced way back then on the slimy and dripping streets of Berlin or Mumbi. This forced acceptance by a society we were rejecting forced the more radical Junkers like us to take it up a notch. That’s when we attacked the very systems that allowed people to live on Mars, the atmosphere plants that filled the craters with fresh air for the last hundred years. We left viruses everywhere, blew things up and killed anyone Proto looking; like we were avenging angels. Our slogan was change or die, and most Protos and other less radically altered Junkers or Nexters were targeted too. When I came up with "The Soup" as I called it; even put it in a can like the Warhol painting; I was really angry. The Flesh Eaters had hit number one in the music charts and bought a palatial home on old earth in Italy! They had practiced cannibalism! I felt abandoned by my own Junkers; I made the soup and poisoned farms. Mars relied on its farms, gravity means you better grow things mostly made of water on Mars otherwise it costs money to import stuff. I knew the cops would be after me. I sent the code everywhere even hacking a billboard for all to see; only few hundred genes and you too can make a "Soup" can.

On Thasis it worked a treat; most other crater colonies had the same effect. The soil was forever tainted my crowning moment, me and Minks toasted on top of the new Reichstag using a Protos skull for a cup drinking expensive real Champagne . I should have suspected then that something was up with Minks, how would a guy who looked like a glittering robot buy Champagne?

What happened next was a ban, article 500 of the United Nations; Genetic alteration is now licensed by the holders of the recombination patents Berkley Genomics and Crown and Wrath. Every shop was forcibly closed down, the sale of home kits banned. These two companies busted the market up, imprisoning anyone who didn’t sell them back anything derived from the master patent. I remember my buddy Red saying “I’m fucking all those Protos”. He told me that a Berkley guy came to his house said, that the home kit you have there is now illegal; we own the patent on recombination, we have caught twenty gang members of yours who have this unique cocktail of enhancements you have been working on for about five years. They offered him a job! Red told them to go fuck themselves then crushed the guys’ spine with his lobster claw.

After the UN passed the bill, being a Junker became unfashionable and most of the pretenders left the movement following the new Peacers Hippy revival. The music got shit all of a sudden and I knew our days were numbered. Red wasn’t going down; together we released the plague on a small facility called freedom station. It was totally effective, insanity and death perfect weapon against the Protos. We were transporting the plague when we got caught; Red took a rail gun to the face I barely made it out losing one of my arms. I limped back to Tharsis, walking on the surface of Mars avoiding the roads and mag trains.

By the time I contacted Minks I was just below the lip of Tharsis crater I couldn’t get up to the atmospheric processor to release the plague, Minks leaned over me and smiled with diamond teeth. "You did good Tomas the Junkers have produced the exact effect that Sibel and Dawn were paid to achieve". It hit me like a bullet, no like train; a train fired out of a giant gun like a bullet, really hard anyway I felt like a kid who had another kid break all his toys.

Minks worked for Sibel and Dawn all along, one of the biggest marketing companies around. Sibel himself had planned the operation and brought Minks in to start the movement; mankind would never hand over their rights to their own code without serious civil unrest; mankind would not accept genetic manipulation on a mass scale for centuries. Sibel had been paid by the two patent holders of recombination; the magical process of splicing genes in a living developed organisms. Not only had they got the rights; they got all the open source code to the myriad of changes that had been made. We had been played from day one, the assholes got us to fight their battle and force the UN to pass a resolution. Public opinion had held the companies as saviors of mankind who would bring genetic manipulation back under control. The slimy streets were cleaned, and no one knew who we were; a revolutionary footnote in Martian history the best marketing plan ever. If you want to sell something that’s totally abhorrent the idea that your own right to alter your own code can only be held by a corporation, you have to make the alternative truly monstrous. In us Sibel and Dawn had found the right monsters for the task; the random violence was small scale in comparison to what would have happened, and the profits of Berkley and Crown soared on angelic public opinion. I thought I was a Junker, I thought I had invented something and was part of something. I sold out after that; hell I was sold out at the age of 11 and didn’t even know it.

Gentic Chimira Collective creature flavour story

This story takes a really humorous approach especially like the swearing dog, sounds like me when I'm tired or Damien when he is coding on the poo phone.

http://escapepod.org/2009/07/11/ep206-rogue-farm/