> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://francino.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Cheap DNA - URL: https://francino.ghost.io/cheap-dna/ - Published: 2026-10-11T16:09:14.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-11T16:09:14.000Z - Description: In a world pushed to the brink by a changing climate, Aiki’s future takes an unexpected turn when cutting-edge biotechnology enters her life. But some gifts come at a price, and the truth can be more dangerous than the technology itself. - Author: Ferdinand Francino - Tags: fiction, cyberpunk **Cheap DNA** Aiki sat against the machine room on the roof of the flat, cushioned by her backpack. Her head was tilted back so that her skull was touching the concrete. She was looking up, watching the trails of planes, designed for that purpose, releasing sulphur into the stratosphere. She counted three, specks illuminated by the midnight moon, weaving railroad tracks against the stars. She thought it looked like they were braiding the hair of angels. She sighed and returned her gaze to the phone in her hand. “Have you seen this?” she asked Ren, who was sitting next to her in the same position, rotating her phone to show him the video of a burning ocean where methane bubbled up from the East Siberian shelf and Russian and American submarines collaborated to ignite it. "Of course I have,” he replied. “I don’t live under a rock you know.” At that moment, the stroke of midnight, the phone pinged and a smiling man with a cocktail in his hands, toasting the lens, replaced the flames. The caption read: “Happy Birthday!” “That’s your dad, isn’t it?” Ren said. “He’s a bit early.” Aiki rotated her phone back to look at it. “He is always exactly a month early. Must have made a typo in his spreadsheet or something,” she replied, while tapping the ‘thanks’ button the app helpfully supplied. Another message appeared almost immediately. “Can we meet? I have something for you.” Aiki sighed. Her dad had left when she was 12, edging toward 13\. When her hips started to widen and little bumps appeared on her chest. When he was physically confronted with the fact she wasn’t a son, and he’d never have one if he stuck around. He wasn’t a bad guy. He provided for her and her mum without complaints, and even generously so. He was something high-up in bio-tech, so he could afford it, even while he had remarried and had fathered the son he so desperately craved a year ago. On occasion he and Aiki would exchange a flurry of text, and very rarely they’d video call. Like when he called to congratulate her when she graduated high school, beaming with pride. He didn’t ask what she was going to do next, or offer advice, which she thought showed extreme self constraint. He bought her a new Bogu when she passed the Shinsa. But still. He had left them. “I’ll think about it,” she replied and then switched off her phone because Ren stood, put on his helmet and gloves and took the Shinai. “Ready when you are.” Aiki nodded, rose to her feet, and donned her Men and Kote as well. It was too hot for full armor, even at midnight. “When’s your Shinsa, shodan?” she asked, subtly teasing him with the fact she had passed it and was now second Dan while he failed and was still 1st. “You know that, bitch,” he smiled at her behind the metal grill of his helmet. She smiled back. Then they fought. They had been fighting, sparring, for over a decade since when Aiki was barely seven her father had insisted she’d join a Kendo dojo. It hadn’t been easy to find one that was ancient and had a good reputation while it also allowed for female students but her father had managed. First she hated him for it, then she hated the boys more. Almost as much as they despised her presence. One day, a few weeks in, a kid had hurt himself and the sensei was out, apologizing to the mother who came to pick the boy up. There were seven of them left. Aiki on one side, six boys on the other. “We don’t want you here,” one of them said, “we’ll teach you a lesson.” Another boy, slightly taller than the others, the oldest, stepped forward and Aiki clutched her Shinai but he shook his head slightly and ended up next to her, facing the remaining five. Without a word he lashed out with his bamboo sword and hit an opponent on the upper arm, making the kid yelp and drop his weapon. Aiki thought that was a brilliant idea and did the same to the boy on the other side of the row in front of them. The kid in the centre, who had told her ‘they’ didn’t want her here scowled. But at that time the sensei returned. He immediately gauged the situation. His face, usually a mask carved from Keyaki, yet able to ooze approval or reproach, showed the tiniest of smiles when he put his hand on Ren’s shoulder. “Where were we?” he then said.That evening Ren, who lived in the same apartment building as she did, knocked on her door and asked her parents permission for him and Aiki to train together, without explaining where. Aiki’s father was delighted and didn’t ask. Every time Aiki took the subway from Yotsubashi to Hommachi she wondered why she didn’t do so more often. It was only 2 minutes. But because of that, she also only pondered it very briefly. It was close to midnight and the business district she embarked into was all but deserted, even while office hours had moved into the night to counter the heat. Most people worked from home now, and paid the bills for the air conditioning themselves. Empty towers of glass, the windows reflecting the lightning from a thunderstorm approaching. The humidity was oppressing. She couldn’t even sweat properly. She had decided to indulge in her father’s request to meet, and the something he had for her, the thing he wanted to discuss, was at his place of work. Which she thought to be peculiar, but also intriguing. She punched the number her father had texted her into the panel next to the glass door and it hissed open to show an empty lobby with a bot that looked remarkably human behind the reception desk. She told it who she was here for and the thing politely requested her to wait, offering water. Aiki accepted. You don’t reject cool, clean water, free of charge. The elevator pinged and produced her father, wearing a lab coat over his shirt and tie. The A/C must run overtime where he came from. He smiled, they briefly bowed and then he led her into the elevator. They were going down and with every floor the temperature dropped a little. Aiki shivered and grinned, she had almost forgotten how it felt to be cold. Her father smiled back at her and handed her a lab coat as soon as they emerged into an environment composed of stainless steel, chrome and glass with some pieces of equipment she couldn’t even fathom the purpose for. He led her deeper into the area until they reached a large room. Chrome tables with black blotches on them lined the walls. A similar table but larger sat in the middle, the black substance on it in the shape of a human being, like a shadow. Aiki instinctively looked for the person casting it. A desk with two chairs stood in a corner, and this is where her father guided her, motioning her to sit down. He offered her water, or tea perhaps. She took the water. It was so cold it had a metallic taste to it, and stung her mouth. He took his seat behind the desk and pushed a sheet and a pen over to her. “It's just a formality,” he said. “It's an NDA, very standard, but the stuff we do here isn’t for the public yet.” Frowning at the unexpected, formal procedure Aiki glanced it over. “What stuff?” she asked and he shrugged, spread his arms, then gestured at the form in front of her and smiled. Bastard. “Curiosity killed the cat,” she said and signed it. “Now I’ll show you the stuff,” he said and led her to one of the tables lining the wall. On it was the shape of an arm, recognisable as such because of the hand and fingers. He took off his coat and she was surprised to see that his shirt was missing one of the arms, until he placed his arm on the shape. She gasped when it slowly morphed around his limb covering it in a black, slightly scaly surface. “What the hell is that?” she managed. “This,” her father replied, “is artificial skin. We’re designing a skinsuit that will be able to control the body temperature in the increasing heat outside. It won't stay black, obviously, but will be transparent." “What is it?” she whispered, reaching out to touch her father’s arm or the cool, slick stuff it was encased in. “Graphene, a lot of other technical stuff but, here’s the key, human DNA. In this case mine.” He muttered something she didn’t catch, but it seemed to be instructions, because the black skin retreated. “Wanna try it?” Her eyebrows rose. “I can?” He nodded. “We share enough DNA. It’s not that picky.” Aiki bit her lip, looking at the shape and remembering a host of horror movies. Then she slipped out of the lab coat. Her shirt was sleeveless. When the material folded itself around her arm her skin tingled a little, like a menthol rub. Then she didn’t feel it any more at all. She touched her other arm with it and couldn’t tell it was there. “Amazing,” she whispered. Her father glowed with pride. “It is, isn’t it? Just whisper ‘release’ if you want it off.” She did. “How does it understand that?” she wondered. “It’s encoded with keywords,” he replied. “But it gets better.” He led her to the table in the centre of the room. Cocking her head, Aiki looked at the substance, black as tar in the shape of a human, almost like a hole in the chrome surface. “This is the full version. And this is what I want to talk to you about. I want to offer you a job.” “What job?” she had to ask, even while she could venture a guess. “Research assistant,” he immediately replied. “There's no danger, I’ve worn it hundreds of times. But I can’t measure objectively when I’m inside of it. And with you we don’t have to craft another one with different DNA. Saves time, saves money.” *‘And I can stop wondering what the hell to do next,’* Aiki thought. So she almost immediately took the job. The pay was amazing as well. It was Ren’s voice that pulled her from a state of fugue she hadn’t known she was in. “We don’t even know where she is!” It came from a distance but she could tell he was shouting. Which wasn't something Ren was prone to do. *Ren. Did she miss his Shinsa? Oh god. Please no.* At that moment the skinsuit informed her in a language without words that she was drugged and wanted to know if that was intentional. Her fury answered and she felt dizzy, like when you suddenly stand up and the blood rushes from your brain. The suit was filtering her blood. This wasn’t immediate. She swayed lightly on her feet, recognising the shimmering male figure in a labcoat as her father, looking at the phone on his desk. The same desk on which she had signed the NDA. And, just two days later, the employment contract. How did he drug her, she wondered. Then she remembered the metallic taste of the water, masked by the temperature, and the ease with which she had signed the NDA. Then again water, and a contract. While she stood there swaying she glanced down and focussed to see her body encased in the matt black skinsuit, the texture making her look like a lizard in human form. The first time she had laid down on the black shape, embarrassed by her nudity in front of her father, she had felt a prickling sensation in the back of her neck, as if a hairbrush was pressed into her skin and that was the last thing she was aware of, until now. Now she was aware of everything. The skinsuit wasn’t designed to control body temperature. It was military hardware. Like an exoskeleton with a myriad of nano wires digging into her spine, then fanning out into her brain. A brain swarming with synapses from over a decade of Kendo, the suit branching in. She felt through it, with it. It was part of her, symbiotic. It conveyed more than just sense, touch. It was sentient. She knew, because it cared. She had been training it, embedding it with responses. She had been attuning the combat theories and principles the suit was loaded with to a human nervous system. She didn’t know how long, a couple of weeks perhaps. Did she already have her birthday? *‘That’s why Ren is so angry,’* she thought. *‘He probably has something special planned for my 18th birthday. The one my father was a month early for, as usual.’* Her mother 's voice came from the phone. She said something Aiki couldn't make out because she wasn’t shouting, like Ren had. “I’ll arrange for a video call later this week,” she heard her father say before he picked up and switched off the phone, interrupting Ren when he furiously protested: “It’s her ..” He turned and started to walk toward her. She saw him clearly now. Bile rose in her throat. She averted her gaze to look straight ahead. She willed her hands balled in fists to relax, to breathe slowly, veins in her temples pulsing, a gaping hole under her sternum where her stomach used to be. Her father had crossed the distance and turned to face her. His cheap DNA. Briefly she wondered what would have happened once she was done training the suit. She thought she knew. “Let’s continue,” he said. “Let’s not,” she replied and snatched the phone from his hand, breaking 14 out of 27 bones. He paled, groaned, staring at his hand while staggering backwards. Satisfied he wasn’t a threat she dialled the last contact. Her mother answered. “Can you give me Ren please?” Aiki asked. “I want to go home.”