Destiny: Quantic Dreams Book 3 by Elizabeth McLaughlin (books for 20 year olds .txt) 📗

that sophistication back to the colony; living the rest of my days on rich food would be worth all this trouble. If the androids were capable of producing that food, what else could they make?

What else could they make.

Chapter Sixteen

I made a point of cozying up to the androids who had been friendly with me the next day. They were more than happy to show me their food manufacturing capabilities once I shared choice stories of my adventures in botany. The androids seemed to be amused that a human would bother to breed plants ‘the old-fashioned way.’ It turns out that unlike our printers at the shelter, the ones in the machine city could print down to a near molecular size. The computers contained within only had to be fed a sequence of DNA and it would pull the necessary elements for whatever was needed. They were even happy to let me try them out. I fed the printer the instructions for a simple child’s toy and seconds later I had a small wooden horse to hold.

Perfect.

The androids had detailed information on my every move. I doubt that any of us so much as used the bathroom without a system-wide alert going out. Getting back to this printer with enough time to produce enough palm seeds was going to be a challenge. Hopefully the trial was going to be enough of a distraction. Maybe I could play up the grieving daughter angle and say that I needed time to myself? If that wasn’t an option, I could always find a way to start a distraction. There had to be something around here that could cause a large enough distraction. There had to be fire suppression systems here. If I was able to short something out…I could figure it out later. If I was going to pull this off at all, I needed to relay the information to Eliza and Marcus. I flirted with the idea of telling Dad as well, but he had enough on his mind as things were. His mental state was too unstable since we got here. Adding something else on top of the pile wouldn’t do him, or me, any good. Best to keep him out of it unless absolutely necessary.

I did some rough math. Seeds alone wouldn’t be enough to end the impending famine, but perhaps I could use splice their DNA in with the existing food supply. There weren’t any obvious incompatibilities between the two organisms. The labs would still be intact by the time we made it back and I could start work on my tablet on the way. I would sleep a hell of a lot better as soon as the plan was in place. I made my excuses to Eliza, Marcus, and Dad and found a corner of the building we were housed in. The software was not unlike a program compiler. Pulling up the DNA from the potato plants, I split the screen with palm seed DNA. To the untrained eye side-by-side, the two structures looked nearly identical. To mine, they were the world’s most interesting puzzle. All DNA is made up of chemical building blocks called nucleotides, comprised of a phosphate group, a sugar group, and nitrogen bases. To form a strand of DNA, the nucleotides are linked into chains with the phosphate and sugar groups alternating in the sequence. If you broke it down even further, the information within DNA is stored as a code made up of four chemicals: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. When seeking to edit a genome, injecting the Cas9 enzyme would act like a tiny pair of scissors. After cutting genetic material the desired way, it was a simple matter of inserting the desired genome material and presto—all new organism! The catch was that you couldn’t break evolution’s rules. For instance, it didn’t work well to engineer a human to get their energy from photosynthesis.

Even a couple of seeds would do for me to start making the necessary changes to the potato DNA. If I got out of there with only one, I would be cutting it close with the material, but it could work. We’d have to play it by ear as things went on. The androids would have had digital markers on every one of us. I would pray on the androids’ assumption that all humans were complete morons. The androids were content enough to leave me alone, which worried me. Surely they didn’t consider me so harmless as to assume I couldn’t cause any damage. The more likely scenario is that the machines had backed away just far enough to make me think I was alone. Didn’t matter to me. No time like the present.

The printer was similar enough to the machines we had at the shelter, but there was one major issue; every command on it was written in the robots’ strange language. Somehow I doubted my tablet held a translation app that could handle this. Once I fed the information into the machine, it was a crapshoot as to whether I could get it working. I assumed that the right spots to press were the same as they were at home. Luckily for me there weren’t any complex commands I needed to enter; a simple “execute command” button would do. I glanced back at the door as I pressed the button on screen that looked like it should do the trick and the printer whirred to life. Backing away from the console I kept an ear towards the door. No doubt that my babysitters would hear the noise and come running.

Chapter Seventeen

I jumped out of bed at the sound of the scream. When it became clear that there was no imminent danger, my breathing calmed down enough to figure out what the hell was going on. A crowd was gathered around the entrance to the domed building, pointing and murmuring.

“Let me through! Let me through, goddammit!” Eliza shoved her way through the crowd. They parted to