Dong Jun created a to-do list. This was a crucial moment in time. She didn't want to miss a window of opportunity. If she lost this window of opportunity, that would spell the doom of the planet. The lab had the complete genetics of the entire animal kingdom. If Dong Jun can use the lab for cloning, she would be able to kickstart the food chain again with a little twist. An uneditable animal kingdom wasn't a pipe dream anymore. This planet could become a haven where true evolution takes place.
Needless to say, the first thing she did was create animal kingdom genome variations that had encryptions in their genomes. They were also spliced with the cancer nullifying naked molerat genes from Dwax. This was fairly easy. The AI handled it.
The biome was going to be immune to further attacks of the same kind. The enemy was still in orbit, and Dong Jun didn't know what the red line of that power residing in orbit was. She was going to push the envelope until it That force was forced to act.
Another approach would be to create an image in mind that describes what the rulers in the orbit might want and obey that image like it were some kind of god. Dong Jun didn't want to act like that. It was not in her personality to do so. She wasn't a pushover.
Another plan was the fruit of Dong Jun's compactionism. She wanted to give human beings the ability to cacoon. That would defeat the requirement for metamorphosis pods, effectively rendering individuals capable of constantly improving themselves biologically as long as there is sufficient biomass around.
Such free individuals were the bane of people who were seeking to establish hegemony. To make the vast majority of individuals on a planet consist of such free people wasn't possible under normal circumstances. She has the opportunity to implement this genetic revolution now. This was an opportunity that could come once in a thousand years. She wasn't going to miss it.
A tantalizing feeling overcame her. It was the feeling that an ideologue gets when her goals become achievable.
Up at the orbit, there was a different kind of excitement going on. Morif Salazar was selling land on the planet to the highest bidders in space. He was getting richer and richer. It was obscene. The random rock in space had become his cash cow. It was great not to share the fruits of a planet with a bunch of random assholes. Why would he stress himself out trying to feed 17 billion people when he could just go downsizing? The bio-experiments down there were producing an ample amount of data too. And such data meant money. An obscene amount of money.
The economy was great. Life was great. He could finally sit down and relax. His comfort women have had a lot of work lately.
"I deserve this after all this time."
Morif Salazar remembered that bastard from Fertera Logistics who made a power play on him. The man had dared to insult him to his face by dangling his shares in Fertera Logistics in front of him as if he were dependent on them. Fertera Logistics is no more; its owners are no more; money one might buy their shares is no more.
Morif Salazar was liberated from the hundreds of businesses like Fertera Logistics and their little dances of power. He felt like he had sat down for the first time in his life. No more maneuvering through power currents; no more false smiles; no more corporate politics. There are only the grapes. Juicy, tasty grapes. The choice is clear. The choice was always clear.
Morif Salazar looked at his recent purchase. It will be his new body. This body included a chemical furnace. Unless you were a galactic royalty that utilized some insane technology, it outperformed other genetic templates by a large margin. It was full of vitality and power. The mind and body aren't separate. When the body becomes superior, the mind becomes blissful within it. He was looking forward to that sublime joy.
He stopped checking on the goings-on on the planet. Looking at a bunch of desolate and dead scenes had become really boring. He ran the AI and said,
"Compile every act I have ordered on the surface and make a psychological profile of me. Using that model, automatically decide actions and inactions." Morif Salazar didn't think the lowly hicks who survived down on the planet could pose any threat to him. The less he thought of the planet, the better. The more he tasted the sweet life where he did not think about the planet, the less he wanted to think about the planet.
He resented every moment he had spent in his office. All that time spent in a fish tank where piranhas were trying to catch him slipping to rip out a pound of flesh was dreadful in retrospect. When he saw everyone dying, a huge weight was lifted from his heart.
"Bessy, come in."
He called one of his servants in.
"On all fours, Bessy."
She didn't skip a beat. She fell on all fours as elegantly as she possibly could. She was well trained. Morif crouched and started petting her like one would a cat. She didn't even make a sound. The awkward sounds of breathing and the low-rhythmic voices of the space habitat were the only things that cut through the dead silence of space.
Kahara started to dig the grave for another researcher. This was the third today. She wasn't that keen on doing Dong Jun's bidding. The bitch had suddenly started acting like she owned her. Who does she think she is?
Yet again, Kahara needed Dong Jun's genetic modifications. She grumbled and dragged the researcher's corpse into the shallow grave.
"Fucking haughty bitch, ordering me to do dirty work like she owns me." She spat on the researcher in the shallow grave in front of the researchers who weren't dead yet. She then snapped at the sickly men and women who were looking at her.
"What the fuck are you looking at?"
The researchers averted their gazes, fearing retaliation from this savage-looking woman. From the way she was hauling around corpses, it was clear that she was unnaturally strong. These cancerous individuals were too sickly to do anything. They had the expertise to save themselves if they had access to the right genes and a bio-generator, but those things were, mockingly, just out of their reach.
Dong Jun didn't want her previous acquaintances to rot out in the open. It was the least of the courtesies she could offer them.
For Kahara, however, this was meaningless grunt work. Seventeen billion people had already rotted out in the open. There were also ones Dwax threw at a ditch nearby. Maybe she should've done the same too. She could've told Dong Jun she had buried the researchers later.
She cursed the fact that money wasn't worth anything anymore. She could've at least demanded pay for doing work.
At least this is easy for her now. Ever since she was changed by the catastrophe, everything felt like she was dealing with cotton. Things broke easily, and it was as if they weighed nothing.
Warrow waited uncomfortably in his wheelchair. Kahara was far less attentive than Dwax. That translated to more bedsores and more pain. Bedsores are a serious condition. When a patient is motionless for a long time, their muscles start to destroy themselves. The issue could easily make its way to the bone. He had missed Dwax already.
He lifted his head to look at the sky. Normally, there would be one or two birds flying around, yet there was nothing. They were dead, like everything else in this world. Indescribable grief overcame him. It was as if he wasn't grieving the dead, but death as a fact of life.
Warrow had missed the distractions the most. TV shows, games, and music. He couldn't even lift a finger to zone out on his phone.
The industrial-grade metamorphosis pods in the biolab had successfully added cancer-fighting molerat genes to the researchers. From this point on, the cancerous growths inside their bodies were going to melt and metabolize slowly.
Long Jun wheeled Warrow to the operation table. She finally had enough knowledgeable assistants to help with this minor surgery. She brought out a little surgical electric saw to get through the chitinous armor and made a hole in Warrow's back. She had already melted away the rotten flesh dangling from the chip with special chemicals. After Warrow was ready, the assistant wheeled in the surgical robot.
Now, the researcher's duty was to watch the procedure and intervene if the robot made a mistake. Machines weren't perfect at everything. Even though they were a great help most of the time, they were prone to catastrophic failures when it counted the most. They were a crutch.
The chip was successfully installed without problems. Warrow would be able to walk from now on.