An Ecosystem of Your Very Own

March 7, 2151
PORTLAND–Genetic customization has been taken to new heights with Fenster Corp.’s introduction of the Personal Ecological Terraderm or PET. The service provides clients with two hypodermics of primordial bio-ooze “encrypted” with a key based on clients’ individual Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (“SNiPs”). Once injected, the “ooze” goes to work forming a rudimentary nano-scale ecology just beneath the skin of the torso and arms.

“The whole thing sort of tickles at first,” reports a satisfied client from Redwood City. “But, it’s worth it. Once your PET gets up into senior evo-cycles, you’ll start to get some cool things. Last week I spawned a crimson bottle-nosed moth. Ever since I’ve had a peaceful cloud of ’em following me around.”

Though Fenster makes every effort to ensure an evolutionary trajectory that is both aesthetically pleasing and compatible with the client’s lifestyle, a PET is a freely developing evolutionary ecosystem and specific results cannot be guaranteed. “We do everything we can, particularly at the initial conditions stage,” explains Fenster spokesman Marcheno Davis. “The qualities of the PET substrate can have the most impact on the client’s appearance, so we do what we can to keep a low profile. I can’t reveal exactly what’s in the substrate, but we did begin our design from all-natural micro-algaes and worked towards colorlessness, which turned out to be trickier than we thought.”

The PET substrate interacts with the client’s skin, renewing itself through a complex exfoliating interaction between the skin, the substrate, and the lowest tier of PET organisms that typically emerge within hours of injection. The substrate, and each new PET organism that evolves, is “locked” by the client’s SNiP key, preventing one client’s PET from interacting with another’s. “Interaction between PETs introduces a new level of uncertainty to the whole process,” explains Davis. “We’ve got interacting PETs in the works, though, so couples, close friends, even whole families can have cross-evolving PETs. We see that coming to market maybe 18 months down the road.”

Surprisingly few of Fenster’s early clients have experienced any adverse reaction to their PETs. Some have described an uncomfortable “crawling” feeling during the first month or so when the first generations of biots and biomites tend to reproduce at unsustainable levels before higher-level predators evolve, but most praise the eventual outcome. Though no serious reactions have been reported, Fenster always supplies clients with an “eco-cide” hypo in case of complications. “The eco-cide is keyed to the client’s PET and immediately kills off the substrate and all derivative organisms,” Davis points out. “We got accelerated FDA review and approval because we take careful measures, like providing an eco-cide.”

Whether or not PETs will find a broad market remains to be seen. The company has ramped-up its marketing efforts in anticipation of the spring season, but may run into a healthy amount of skepticism among consumers. “I don’t know, what if something gross evolved, some kind of ugly spider or cockroach rather than the butterflies they keep talking about,” worries a New York resident participating in a PET focus group. It turns out that concerns about what sort of PET organisms might evolve, and how those organisms might reflect on the host-client, are six times more common than questions about possible health side-effects. Vanity, it seems, is more than skin deep.

Earth a Franchise, Astrophysicists Discover

Dec. 8, 2162
CANBERRA–Money, it seems, really does make the world go round. A team of top astronomers has today announced observational confirmation of Marguerite Fury’s controversial General Theory of Unified Universal Monetary Force. Working at the Rudyard Kipling Indenational Observatory, the team spotted and documented a companion, or “franchise,” Earth in the remote V-137 cluster.[p]
“It’s really quite an astounding find,” exclaims team leader Frances Polt, “unparalleled in my 30 year career. The observations predicted by Professor Fury’s work are really starting to crop up at a rate that tends to confirm her insights, but this find is more important for the Theory than anything to date.”

“The General Theory,” explains Professor Fury from her office in Reykjavik, “generalizes my findings concerning the monetary force commonality underlying the four fundamental forces. I realized there that the four forces were, at root, economic in nature, but that, when observed on the quantum level, they weren’t recognizable on the observational scales conventionally used in the financial world. Capital economies fixate upon large masses of funds; they never consider that the fundament of money–unaccountably small fractions of pennies, for example–might also be the fundament of matter. The physics community, likewise, failed to recognize the link.”

Professor Fury’s General Theory predicts that astronomical observations will identify in the structure of the universe common economic principles of organization, including franchising. The franchise Earth, provisionally called “Earth F” by the Kipling team, shares with our Earth a common “matter plan” and “marketing scheme.” “If you look at the profile and content of signals Earth F is sending out, you’ll see that they’re following the same communications strategy that we are,” notes Kipling’s Polt. “Their message to the universal market is the same as ours. Together we should be achieving some market synergies that non-franchised planets can’t.”

In the wake of the recognition of Earth’s franchise status, the race is on to discover our corporate headquarters. “Now that there is some real observational data to confirm the General Theory it makes sense to look seriously at some of the corollaries of franchising,” concedes long-time Fury critic Professor Angstrom Ship of the Harvard Institute of Technology. “If these data are right, and if the General Theory is right, there’s a lot to be learned from headquarters, a lot that will explain the formal and physical constraints that have shaped our short planetary history.”

Some other respected public figures continue to dispute Fury’s work, including the fairly widely accepted Special Theory of Unifying Monetary Force. “The Special Theory reeks of a suspect animism,” points out Hillary Ja, an out-spoken lay-critic. “It talks about these primordial quantum ‘monies’ which determine the way we are, the way the whole universe is. Does that make sense to you? Is it all about money?”

“There is quite a bit of resistance in the public imagination to the implications of the Special Theory,” Professor Fury responds. “But, as untold experimental observations have confirmed, the universe is, fundamentally, economic. Whether we despair at the realization, or profit by it, is up to us.”

Human Jerky: Taboo-Busting Snack Defines Breakthrough Market

Feb. 6, 2098
MINNEAPOLIS, MN–Monsanto Mills today announced that its recently introduced Human Jerky(TM) has surpassed the company’s most ambitious sales projections. “We were able to communicate well with the consumer on this one,” notes marketing VP Wilmer Pret. “It’s a tasty, uniquely nutritious snack food with a modern, avant cachet that others can’t match.”

Monsanto first introduced Human Jerky(TM) six months ago in a few bleeding-edge urban markets that research suggested would be the most likely to adopt the snack as a form of taboo-breaking cultural statement. As seems to have been the case quite often recently, demographic projections missed the mark. Within weeks of its introduction, news of the vacuum-packed snack reached the American mid-west, despite an advertising campaign narrowly focused on costal urban centers. “The demand was overwhelming,” exclaims Pret. “Our servers were flooded with inquiries, people wanting to know when they could buy HumJerk in their local markets. Just to keep the buzz going we sent out literally millions of free samples to customers making the most enthusiastic requests.”

Human Jerky(TM) was conceived to test the consumer market for re-purposed medical technologies that had exhausted their product-cycle in medical markets. Originally developed to grow integrated tissue-and-muscle grafts, and marketed under the name FleshGeneraTor, the technology behind Human Jerky(TM) grows human flesh on a bio-degradable protein-mesh substrate, in a bath of growth-catalyzing enzymes. Sheets of flesh are then jerked in large dehydrators. Some of the more exotic, smoked flavors, including Hickory, and Applewood, are express-smoked under pressure in a controlled combustion smoke chamber.

Monsanto promotional materials tout the nutritional value of Human Jerky(TM), pointing out that human flesh, of all possible sources of natural proteins, supplies the proteins and nutrients most needed by the body. “What better source of the nutrition you need than healthy, carefully-grown human flesh?” asks a popular Monsanto banner.

Medical experts disagree about the nutritional advisability of eating Human Jerky(TM), and FDA officials are keeping a close eye on the claims Monsanto makes publicly about the snack’s nutritional completeness. More than misconceptions about its nutritional value, experts worry about the possibility of the spread of prions. CDC Director of Food Vectors Anton Spright cautions that “public safety depends upon [Monsanto’s] ability to maintain sufficient genetic diversity in its stock. If the line from which they’re working becomes too narrow and degraded, the possibility of prion contamination multiplies exponentially.”

Monsanto is responding to worries like those aired by the CDC by marketing a new, genetically-customized version of the product. “We were always very careful about the diversity of our stock. We routinely replenished the line with grafts from a cross-section of world populations. But, now, we’re going one step further. Next week we’ll start offering My Jerky(TM): Human Jerky(TM) made from flesh grown matching the genetic profile of individual consumers. People can send us in a drop of their blood on a convenient hemo-absorbent card, and, within two weeks, we’ll be able to send them Jerky of their own flesh.”

Some worry, though, about the impact of the everyday violation of one of the oldest and most widespread of cultural taboos. “This may be another case of technology defining what should be done by defining what can be done,” cautions MIT Professor Kermit Jays. “The fact that it is technologically possible to cannibalize human flesh without killing people does not necessarily mean that the taboo should be discarded. Culture is more complex than that. It may be generations before the consequences symptomize themselves in social dysfunctions.”

Kids You Can Be Proud Of, Guaranteed

Oct. 9, 2162
OSLO–Foundlings Inc., the Norwegian subsidiary of Fertility Services International, today began offering clients the ability to ensure that their children will make them proud. The company allows parents to select from a roster of LifeStories for their children, including careerpaths, financial success, social popularity, and even political affiliations and voting records.[p]
“Other companies have tried to offer genealogical tailoring, but they have operated on a ‘genetic engineering’ model, selling genetic traits,” explains company VP Ecker Eerin. “But that’s not what our customers care about. Does Little Johnny have blue eyes or brown eyes? I really don’t care. Frankly I find eugenics services like that morally offensive. What I want to know is that Johnny is going to have a happy and fulfilling life. That’s what we give our customers.”

The service works by exploiting detailed biographical profiles of the future lives of yet un-conceived children. Customers fill out descriptions of the lives and lifestyles they would like for their children and company computers search databases of future biographical profiles for matches with the right sort of life and an imminent conception date. Company salespeople then contract with the parents of the child, purchasing rights to the desired child and securing an agreement that they forbear from having a child for a variable period of from 2-3 years. The customer is then fertilized with a prefabricated egg bearing the genetic signature of the desired child.”

“Rather than getting for our clients individual genetic traits they request-traits which are really just a proxy for the success every parent wants for her child-we are in the business of acquiring fulfilling lives for their children,” notes head of research Vender Little. “The ‘traits’ and ‘eugenics’ people have really misjudged the market, forcing parents to make morally repugnant decisions just in the hopes that the ‘traits’ they pick will have positive consequences for their children. They focus narrowly on the ‘nature’ side of the equation, when what parents want is the outcome of a successful ‘nurture.’ By looking into the future and seeing what sort of people these kids will eventually be, we can guarantee that our customers will be proud parents for the lifetime of their children.”

The company’s services, though, are not without their detractors. Economic Justice Front press releases point out that Foundlings’ clients are chiefly the rich, and the ‘successful’ children they buy come almost exclusively from parents of lesser means.

“Parents must make their own value-maximizing decisions,” explains U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust economist Purvis Exel. “For some, that will mean selling the rights to a child destined to rise above her circumstances. But we make those sorts of calculations all of the time. Families need to be able to choose what’s more important, some money now, paid by Foundlings, or the happiness and financial success of the next generation. At the same time, it’s not a zero-sum game. Parents who sell the rights to a ‘successful’ child can still have an even more successful child later on. Nothing prevents that in the individual case. Still, on average, if the service is popular it will tend to ossify class lines, with the poor selling to the rich children whose success would otherwise increase the incidence of class mobility.”

It is no surprise that Antitrust regulators worldwide have taken an interest in the company, as it works in close partnership with Futurefeedforward, the giant research and financial services multi-national who supplies Foundlings with the future biographical profiles on which the service depends. “We’re looking at this closely,” notes Exel. “We want to be sure that Futurefeedforward isn’t using its dominance of the futuredata industry to control other emerging industries.”