Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

Wednesday August 17 2086

Digital, New Providence

7:02 AM

Charlie Liess was bored of her life. She had everything she could ever want- perfect friends, devoted parents, and enough money to fund an empire for a dozen centuries- but she felt empty. So, of course, she did as all bored rich children gone wayward inadvertently do- experiment with various drugs. In Charlie's case, that meant glitter and artificial hormones. Since she was fifteen, she had participated in a wide variety of illegal acts. Her favourite memory was, indeed, a cyber-jacking that she had paid for in order to convince her parents to allow her to move out at the age of sixteen.

A newsflash on one of the many holo screens open on her MindBubble caught Charlie's attention. She tapped on it and read through the short article, fascinated. At last, here was a cause worthy of her attention. Charlie pressed the button that called for her personal assistant, Reid.

"Find me as much information about Dr. Nadia Chase as you can. The budget is 1 thousand credits- whatever you don't use, keep as a tip." she requested. Reid, having just appeared in the doorway behind her, nodded and left quickly. He had never failed Charlie, even when tasked with the most ridiculous assignments. The information was always professionally formatted and entirely accurate (one might even say too accurate- Reid had ways of uncovering information best left hidden in the various nooks and crannies of the Datastream).

Charlie, unsatisfied, set her AI chip implant (which enhanced her naturally high brain capacity to an extreme level) to good use. She began to do her own search into the seemingly dull young woman's life. After thirty or so minutes of getting nowhere- academic awards, early graduation, the usual bioengineering prodigy path- Charlie surfaced an article that shed new light on the doctor. Her mother, Dr. Natalie Nyen, had been part of the breeding initiative that failed to set a stable food supply for the collapsing civilizations. And she wasn't just a participant- she had been one of the faces of the program. Nyen was one of the biggest advocates for the revival of large extinct animals, like the wooly mammoth. But for whatever reason, funding was ceased and the project fell through.

There was no father in the picture, so where had Dr. Nadia Chase taken her last name from? Charlie searched, but couldn't find a significant other in the doctor's life.

Out of frustration, Charlie typed Nadia Chase's name into DigiLife, the largest social media platform worldwide. The only result for the doctor was from four years prior. It was a photograph of a younger Chase holding a sign with a gaggle of other girls surrounding her. The sign, which read "Say No To Cloning Edict 52.3" surprised Charlie. Nadia Chase had been against the very organization which now employed her. Charlie moved the image to a note-taking program she had created, marking it with the date and significance.

A rap on the portway brought Charlie out of her intense bubble of focus. Stretching her arms, she realised that nearly three hours had passed. "Come in!" she called. The portway opened and Reid entered, holding a large digital file.

"I have the information you requested, miss."

Charlie nodded. "Very well. An extra 250 credits will be added to your account."

Reid backed out of her room, bowing. "Thank you, miss."

Charlie opened the file with great interest. There was nothing Reid couldn't get information on- even the most secretive of government agencies were nothing compared to his network of hackers. Charlie didn't ask for names, even though she could have; that information wasn't necessary. All she needed was the ability to find people. And that was something that her terrifying intellect and unlimited wealth made quite simple.

Charlie leafed through several pages of basic information before she hit the jackpot she was looking for: Nadia Chase had just performed a surgery on a tiger. And not just any surgery, but the first cesarean section in over thirty years. The same operation that was made obsolete by the advance of cloning that her mother had played a very large role in.

The information made Charlie smile. How ironic, a young woman undoing all of her mother's work in a single night.

The next page was a shock to Charlie. A bold headline read "WILD CAT BEHAVIORIST ACCUSES CLONED BEEF OF HEALING TIGER'S REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM".

The press release was hushed up quickly; clearly, The Manor had been busy. The large biocorp would deny any allegations that their beef was anything but pure cow, but Charlie knew different. During a series of intense bursts of concentration, she had uncovered the truth behind the cloned cows.

There had been an issue with cloning cows, in particular. The variety selected was a hassle; a genetic hybrid between a star bull that weighed nearly 900 pounds, and a heifer that produced record amounts of milk. Ever since hormone implants were created that made full-time milk production, without the issue of actual insemination, possible, the race had been on to find the best milker. And the result had been Our Lady Bessie Stephanie Day, an impressive 600 pounds of brown-and-white speckled heifer. A few of her eggs were taken for genetic use- the original plan was to clone Bessie and create a herd of superior cows. But the owner of King Maximillian Backbreaker II had contacted the HCBA (Human Consumption Betterment Agency, the biocorp that brought cloning into food production) and arranged for the two cattle to be turned into one superior breed- the ultimate livestock.

The plan seemed simple enough- until Bessie caught a rare strain of the only virus she wasn't immune to, the UVA. The UVA, which stands for Ultra-Violet Allergy, made its victims develop deadly tumors whenever they came in contact with the sun's rays. And, Bessie being a cow, that proved difficult to work around. The only workable solution seemed to be a life of artificial light for the heifer. Bessie, a finicky and rather delicate specimen (although one wouldn't know it, looking at her) declined alarmingly rapidly. The HCBA scientists removed Bessie's eggs before she died of UVA, fertilizing them with Maximillian's sperm. Of the thousands of eggs, only 56 flourished in the artificial wombs. And during the two years it took for the calves to develop into adults, the test was almost forgotten, already shelved among discarded projects.

And then the first of the cows began to produce milk.

The superior herd of cows, 41 females and 15 bulls, grew to colossal sizes and produced record-breaking amounts of milk. The experiment had been a success in the eyes of the scientists that grew the calves in their artificial wombs, but one woman set out on an ambitious, heroic quest with the noblest intentions: she wanted to clone cattle for human consumption in order to decrease starvation rates.

Her name was Courtney Cruz.

Cruz's plan was faced with a lot of backlash from the animal rights groups, which claimed that it was unethical to clone animals in order to slaughter them. A factory system, they said, was no way to treat living, thinking beings. But governments, hungry for solutions to famine, sought Cruz out and demanded that she be allowed a budget of one billion credits for her work, which started on March 29, 2082. The four-year project stretched into six years, in which Cruz made a name for herself in the scientific community. She perfected the cloning process (which cows in particular were quite resistant to) and developed a large herd of swiftly growing, enormous, milk-yielding cattle. Now one of the youngest billionaires in the world at 23, Courtney Cruz was still developing a wider range of crops and livestock to feed the globe.

Some revered her as a hero. Charlie knew the truth, however, and Courtney wasn't much of a hero. In her searches, Charlie had hacked into the HCBA database and found that the elite cattle were not, as Cruz claimed, free of genetic modifications. They were loaded with hormones and genetic tags, with implants that made them immune to diseases and injury. The supposedly 'naturally enhanced' genes were tampered with until the cows were nearly twice as heavy as they should be. That weight meant most of them wouldn't survive past the age of three- which was why they were slaughtered (with the exception of the healthier milk-producers) at one year old.

Charlie should have been disgusted. Instead, she was intrigued. Why would a biocorp put so much effort into hiding perfectly legal genetic modifications? The same tweaking of the genes that made the cows immune to disease and injury were done by wealthy pet-owners to ensure the health and nearly doubled lifespan of their beloved dog, cat, or horse. And the elite weren't above mixing it up a little- Charlie had friends who owned cats with opposable thumbs and prehensile tails, and birds with human vocal chords, and miniature cows that barked like dogs. Charlie herself had owned a genetic toy- a Yorkshire terrier the size of a mouse named Bunny. She had had him custom created for her twelfth birthday. The tiny terrier's heart had finally given out after four years, and Charlie hadn't the heart to clone him like her friends did; she felt as if it would be disrespectful to Bunny's memory, and anyway, he had suffered towards the end and she couldn't place that burden on a creature. Recently, Charlie had been eying advertisements for silky rabbits with unicorn horns and a guaranteed life span of thirty years. She had decided to investigate the company a little and see if they came with any warning labels. After all, every designer pet came with one bad trait; it was as if nature was rebelling against the humans that tried to tame and shape it.

Engrossed in thought, Charlie didn't notice the page that had lead her down the rabbithole fizzle out of existence.

**Remember to like this chapter and add this to your stories if you want to keep up with Nadia and the gang!