Ellie Quin Book 01: The Legend of Ellie Quin Read Online Free Page A

genetic data for convenience, to suit central government’s - the Administration’s - needs.
    Oh yes, the department did a hell of a lot more than just collating the DNA of eager parents to-be. The ready-to-grow embryos that Mason’s department returned to those hopeful parents around the universe were mostly the product of their blood – with a few tweaks added for good measure.
    Meddling, enhancing , along guidelines provided to Mason from the Administration. Small things of course; enhanced bone structure for embryos due to be returned to hi-gravity worlds, UV-resistant skin pigments for those returning to weak-atmosphere worlds. But also subtle behavioral adjustments to ensure these precious little embryos grew up to be reliable, compliant little citizens.
    It had been like this since natural fertility had been bred out for practical reasons, many hundreds of years ago, each new generation was grown to order now. Each new generation tinkered with.
    Mason sat down at his mock-mahogany desk and continued the task he had been working on all morning. He waved his hand over the desk sensor and his holo-screen display flickered on before him. His personal data space was full of essays and notes he had written during his long tenure here, essays that had grown more hectoring and worrisome in tone as the years had passed. Essays high-lighting the growing occurrence of serious congenital disorders, mutations. Little by little, the inevitable genetic errors, an unavoidable result of so much editing , were mounting up. And Mason was seeing the laboratories producing more and more freaks in-vitro with each passing week.
    They were destroying the human genome.
    Mason had long ago given up sending these essays of concern back to the Administration. He knew there was little they would do even if they wanted to. Population distribution within Human Space needed to be tightly managed. There were too many fragile young worlds in early phases of terraforming that could barely sustain their small populations. The paternity requests approved to those places had to be only for children of healthy, hardy parents who contributed in some way to that process. And even then, they needed tweaking to be that bit more healthy and productive than their parents.
    Tough life forging some remote colony on a far-flung world. Any little extra help; firmer bones, thicker UV-resistant skin was a good thing.
    And let’s not forget, deciding who shall have children and who shan’t is a very useful chokehold. Rebellious planet? Not a problem, just don’t let ‘em breed. They’ll die out soon enough.
    Mason suspected that the bureaucrats of the Administration were all too aware that every year the mutation levels were getting worse. But they had no choice, not if they wanted to hold on to the way things were. This system worked for them. For better or for worse.
    Mason dragged his notes, his essays, his digital scribblings across to the DELETE icon in the corner of his workspace, then had second thoughts. Deleted files were compressed and kept in a central ‘pending’ archive, sometimes for several weeks before being automatically wiped. They could be easily retrieved before that happened. And read. He couldn’t afford for that to happen.
    Oh, if only delete actually meant delete.
    Instead he dragged all of the collected files into an obscure data folder, one protected by a password and innocuously named ‘Stats-Temp’. He knew his assistant, Rowan Brown would dutifully and respectfully clear out his old files, purging all of his personal data space after he’d spent all of five minutes mourning his boss’s death. Brown so-o-o wanted this office cubicle, this desk, this view and wouldn’t wait to get started making this space his own.
    Mason dropped the files into the directory and nodded with satisfaction. Brown would erase it. And that was fine. Just as long as there was nothing lying around related to file L-239-HR-2457709. Nothing at