Free A New Divide (Science Fiction) by Nathaniel Sanders Page A

"No, we 'doctors' had nothing to do with that."
                 
    As soon as Mark had won his battle, he ordered his armada to return to Dilo . Dilo was the largest moon of Remora, and home to the humans who guarded the sacred planet of Remora, the headquarters of the Remoran Protectorate, or the Remoran Expeditionary Unit. I fell asleep shortly after my talk with Wright and when I awoke a day later, my leg had healed, and I found myself talking to this doctor.
                  "Mr. King, if you have any questions—"
                  "You have no idea."
                  "Ask away."
                  I looked to my forearm and saw the tattoo, the tainted skin—the light was faint, but it still moved and swayed in the same pattern. I wanted it gone.
                  "Get rid of this tattoo on my skin."
                  The doctor then sighed and turned off his holoband. He adjusted the eyepiece he wore and adjusted his chair towards me.
                  "We tried."
                  "And?"
                  "It's not a tattoo. That is your skin, it's an imprint; we tried to remove it, and when we did it broke a very expensive machine."
                  "Well, I don't feel bad about that, but how can my skin just . . . change color, instantly?"
                  "Well, it only stretches from your torso below your neck, above your waist, and before your wrists. This err mutation . . . has always been there, but you needed a trigger to see it."
                  "Thanks for calling me a freak, Doc."
                  "Think, Collin. What did you take? Right before the crusaders attacked?"
     
                  Then I remembered.
                  "The genome"
                  "Precisely. That's exactly what I thought."
                  I slammed my fists on my bed out of frustration. "So what can you do! What can you do to fix me?"
                  The doctor then laughed and handed me a small vial full of a strange liquid. "You got it all wrong, son, there is nothing wrong with you. Here drink this. It will help you relax, I have a theory as to the nature of your 'condition.'"
     
                  I drank the sweet-tasting liquid as I listened to his tale. It relaxed me to a point where I found it difficult to move from my seat.
                  "The genome was discovered during mankind's migration from our depleted motherworld. It was a cure for a virus that had been caused by cosmic radiation. Billions of people died aboard the ships during the plague. They made a discovery, soon after reengineering the makeup of the strange radiation. A cure was generated. And the cure yielded far greater results than a clean bill of health.
                  "The Alpha Genome, once taken, will cause a human being to live in perfect health for four hundred standard days—never aging, and never succumbing to illness, but still vulnerable to physical contact. Flesh is still flesh, and the genome makes no difference as to how easily it can tear—only how easily it can be maintained, and repaired.
                  "After a while people learned that if the genome is taken once every year, they could grasp a sort of partial immortality. But flesh could still be torn, limbs could not be replaced, and reproductive abilities would cease. If you're shot in the heart, not even the genome can bring you back from death."
     
                  "This is all common knowledge, Doc, can you get to the point?"
                  "The Alpha Genome is about as understood as the human brain. It's a reengineered cosmic phenomenon; we clicked it just right for it to do what it does. Now to my point, one out of every one billion people who take the genome will be able to reproduce. Although I've never