Faster Model

I found this a few days ago on an old backup disk.   Here's the story that was with it.

The completion of the Human Genome project in the early twenty first century was hailed as a major landmark in the understanding of genetics in general and human genetics in particular. That it should have sparked one of the major great shifts in human evolution (and great wealth for some) should have come as no surprise. With the understanding in genetics came an understanding in structural development. At first, everyone hailed these developments as "Wonders of the New Age". Regeneration of lost limbs, damaged spinal cords, quick creation of perfectly tissue matched transplant organs - all wonders indeed.

It seems, though, that where there is great knowledge, there will be those to put it to commercialization. At first, it was painless plastic surgery. Who could resist being decades younger in only a few weeks? Then the more daring embraced the technology. "Star Trek - Deep Space Nine" - along with the other Star Treks - was having one of its periodic revivals in the late twenty first century. Despite the age (after all, who watched flat images anymore?), some of the ideas in the costumes fascinated. The strange skin markings of the Trill, the bony protuberances on the heads of the Klingon, even the elephantine ears of the Ferengi were different and exotic. For some, they were desirable and a daring fashion statement.

As often happens, what is daring one year in fashion is totally boring the next. Fashion in body form began to change as rapidly as fashions in clothing. Soon bat wings, faerie wings and strange antenna were seen everywhere. Of course, not all approved. "If God had meant ..." statements were soon expounded by conservatives everywhere. There were riots and lynchings before things were brought under control. The peculiar brain disorders that created the fanatic, it seemed, were genetic and hence treatable.  Where in the past, parents might hope for a child to take over the family business, now the fervent hope was only that the child would remain recognisable when they reached their eighteenth birthday.

Bridget's parents were no exception. They loved her, of course. But when she decided to take advantage of the biomodification process and become one of the "Mods", it was a shock. Little did they realise just how far she'd go. Ten months prior, DNA had been successfully synthesised from numerous partial strands in amber-encased Cretaceous insect stomachs and back-emitted from birds. Her father, powerless to stop Bridget's admission into a biomod centre ten days after her eighteenth birthday, wrung his hands wondering what she'd emerge as. Her mother, similarly distraught, remembered her own parents anguish at her own faerie wings. She, too, wondered what their daughter was to become.

When she emerged a month later, she had changed. In her eyes for the better but perhaps not so for parents whose own biomods were far less extreme. Bridget had always wanted speed - but not cars and planes, her own speed - and the Velociraptor was one of the fastest things on two legs.