Phenocladistics

Phenocladistics

Phenocladistics is the specific application of genetic manipulation to create new strains of humanity. This differs from traditional genetic manipulation in that the entire organism is altered, including the reproductive system.

The doctor looked up at the expectant parents. I am afraid that the prognosis isn't great. Your child currently is going to be predisposed to not just heart disease, but the same hypertension and baldness that runs in both of your genetics. The man looked up, his face was a mask of despair, already his own health had faltered and the thought of infecting his unborn child with his genetics frightened him. It was a brave new world, but being tethered to a bottle of pills, unable to afford that new heart, making payments on the one being grown in a factory. 'Is there anything we can do?' The doctor nodded, 'GeneFix will address this, your child will be cleansed of these issues, and their children will likewise be innoculated against these diseases. 'Can we afford it?' the mother asked.

'Can your child afford it?'

Mechanics

The typical procedure for creating a new 'clade' involves taking genetic samples from a number of hosts and creating the desired genetic code in a lab. This code is used in the creation of a gene virus, the typical mechanism for initiating and propagating genetic manipulation in a host. This is fairly normal for anyone who has had any sort of genetic treatment, but the difference is that the only thing targeted are the reproductive systems. The host will not demonstrate any of the new traits that their potential offspring will carry.

Ubermensch and the Tycho Convention

The Tycho Conventions have as one of their foundation doctrines, the banning of engineering ubermensch, or genetic superhumans. For the most part this has been for show, and has had almost no effect on various nations and megacorps funding their own supersoldier programs. These programs do create one-off super humans, but they are perfectly normal when it comes to reproduction, those that have not been sterilized by their respective programs, that is. Most phenoclades are able to skirt around the conventions as the humans augmented and altered by the respective programs are not markedly superior to the baseline human form.

Basic Phenoclades

GeneFix - The GeneFix Clade, also known as the genee or genie, is a commonly available clade in the Atlantic Federation. It has been pirated, licensed, stolen, and otherwise been copied in other nations, or other nations have convergently reached a very similar product. Gene screening is still routine for pregnant women to check the genetic health of their children. This can be invasive and costly when extensive modifications are required. The GeneFix clade has had the genome cleansed and fortified against hereditary diseases such as prevalence towards cancer, diabetes, Alzheimers, and other serious diseases. As this modification spreads, there will eventually come a point when in utero modifications and corrections will become as outdated as polio vaccines. The Atlantic Federation has a long term plan of having at lest half of its terrestrial population GeneFixed and all of it's off world citizens GeneFixed within a century. This would decrease medical and health costs as well as improving the lifespans and productivity of its citizens and residents. In the dual class Federation, the Citizens are receiving this treatment preferentially over residents

GeneFixing yourself is almost a no-brainer. Who wants to make sure they pass on genetic diseases to their kids? There are certainly luddite movements who resist the treatments, but the Federation isn't pushing them. They don't have to. The longer the GeneFix program runs, the more it pays off. The people having unaugmented kids are just starting to notice the differences. They don't really show up until their offspring start hitting their 40s and 50s. Those first and second gen genefixers are perfectly healthy. Those who chose not to are starting to drop off to things like heart disease. They are also economically punished because they are still afflicted by the various cancers and other diseases. They die off, they have fewer kids, and the GeneFixed live longer, and while they don't have more kids in the long run, those children see a consistently better quality of life.

Genetocrat - The genetocrat clade is the product of the wealthiest level of society taking their genetics into their own hands. The genetocrat has been GeneFixed, but the modifications go on from there. Undesirable traits such as shortness, baldness, predisposition to metabolic disorders (being fat) or being unattractive. The Genetocrat modification was created to make sure that the straight toothed, clean cut, hoity-toity aristocracy of the Cosmic Era had children who were born as close to perfect as their parents worked to make themselves. The genetocrat clade has a large number of variations, with powerful and influential families developing their own specific clade, so that they and their offspring are readily and easily noticed. Cosmetic traits include adding unnatural eye colors, specific biomods such as alternate skin and hair colors, and so forth.

That's what gets them though. Those elite bastards have to keep getting it on with other genetocrats to make sure their gene coding stays clean and pure to their liking. There's lots of cousin fucking and in some households you can tell that instead of having pureborn kids, they're having self-fertilizing treatments. You don't see a lot of half-genetos. It's looked down on, and some insiders will tell you that genetos can only breed with each other, or there are rumors about them basically self cloning, culturing their own cells to grow into new children, beautiful and perfect just like them.

Hero - The Hero clad is growing in popularity among the physically inclined, with an emphasis on those in military tradition families. The hero clade is genefixed, but also has some basic strength, cardiovascular, and reflex tailored augmentations. Hero clade humans are stronger, faster, and have greater stamina than the average human. This isn't to say that they are towering giants made of muscle and bone like the Dynamo Atlas mods, but instead the Hero clade baseline in comparable to a professional athlete for physical ability.

That's the start of the breeding soldiers, taller, stronger, braver, and smugly confident. They think they are better than everyone else, never thinking about who made them, and why. It's gradual, the frog thrown in boiling water jumps out, the one put in cold water brought to a boil never jumps, just dies and cooks. The boffins behind the genetics are going to create races of supersoldiers, warrior caste humans, but they are going to take their time, generations, not years. Generations.

Mentons - The menton is a niche clade, GeneFixed and then augmented for intelligence. While the predominant perspective is that the menton clade would be for creating scientist and engineering families and populations, it is really quite exceptional for creating non-physical special ops, pilots, CogNet systems ops, and so forth. While the public image of the menton clade is the benevolent technician working to keep vital machines running, or working in a lab on the newest breakthrough in technology, most are recruited into corporate and national tech and cyber divisions.

One of the big myths from the petrol era was that being smarter that someone made you better than them, but somehow being too smart was a bad thing. A lot of the menton jerks you might meet are convinced of their own superiority, but somehow are just as following orders and pigeonholed as the grunts and clone troopers they work with. Now, when you get a couple of these wads to figure out that they are gene-engineered monkeys, and you let their hands turn to making bombs and fixing war droids, then it gets interesting.

Other - There are many other clades, ranging from basic templates that are a few generations old to cutting edge stuff fresh from the labs. Either way, these are a tiny fraction of the potential clades. The basic human phenotype is still the most common, with the basic GeneFixed slowly but surely gaining ground, especially in first world nations like the Atlantic Federation. Heroes and genetocrats are roughly equal in number, and mentons are the least common of the major clades

That's the big plan, those bastards who are pulling all of the strings want a large, healthy, and docile population to keep the engines of humanity running, but all their work is going to be done be genetically engineered races. It won't be like how people thought it would be, the warriors and the scientist and leadership castes are going to look human, act human, but they wont be. They will be something else, something posthuman.