Prelude:

The peak of the century had come and gone, leaving the world and society damaged by the harm of earlier generations. Yet despite the wreckage, life and science still went on. The challenges of society along with the challenges of living in space was pushing things to the edge, to the boundaries of what some might feel is acceptable.

1.

It was a scientific and ethical quandary that had challenged Erika Rigal all her life, ever since she had begun her work and received her doctorate. The question and the root of her research for the last twenty years of her life was this: Should the genome of humanity be tampered with?

She would reply with her own view on the matter, “If mankind is to progress into the stars and the scourges of defects be removed from society, then of course we must go forwards, we must evolve though nature or manipulation. It is something we have been doing for thousands of years with animals and plants, so why stop there?”

Erika knew her answer had problems, along with areas which when pushed she might actually disagree with in areas depending upon who she was debating with.

Others when explained what her line of work and specialisation was, would occasionally ask “But if you continue altering the potential children, would they still be human?”

Often Erika would pause after that question, before giving her answer, “In a Short answer, yes.” If pressed further, she would elaborate, “In the end it would depend upon how far they are altered, whether they end up as human, trans-human or something else. Genetically we are not that far away from a pig or a mouse.”

Erika sat at her desk, with a strange feeling of exhaustion washing over her. She had left the work area of the lab and moved from her workbench to her private office. With a wave, the computer booted up for her and Erika began to go over the data and reports on her project and how it was progressing. She sighed, knowing that the majority of the project was over, just the crucial part was left, for the zygotes to develop and for the children to be born and grow. She wondered how over the next twenty years the first batch would develop, she silently wished them well, knowing that her lab was entering relatively unknown territory. The safety trials had shown little problems with the health of the animals used, from mice to rabbits and up to dogs and primates, all had the same editing procedure. From what the observation team reported had been positive on the whole, with the animals living lifespans on average for their species with no apparent ill effects, including after a second manipulation had been applied. The results had pleased Erika and others who shared her view. But now with the first ninety Zygotes ready for implantation the enormity of what her team: The next ninety would potentially be ready the following month at the latest.

For what they had done: was remove the gender from potentially ninety children yet to be born.