Threaded DNA
The Nexmeco[1] makes it so that anyone can intertwine their DNA with another person, making them related. Genetically, of course, but that’s all that counts when you’re trying to bypass strange archaic laws about hospital visits, inheritance, and tax dependency. Symbolically, it’s a much more sanitary (much more expensive) way of slicing one’s palm open and pressing it against another’s. The intimacy of a handclasp replaced by the deep unconsciousness within the murring machine that’s spliced just enough of your DNA with another’s to consider the two of you family. Clients report that while undergoing this process, they share dreams within the realms of anesthesia.
Most exchanges are those wanting to be siblings; friends who have experienced war, poverty, famine, and death. The rewritten script in their genetic code is deeper, more permanent than a tattoo. More noticeable. Over time, it changes their health, weight, skin color, eye color. The changes not immediate, but noticeable in a variety of ways, from the physical to the personal.
Then there are the Nexups, which are the people who are looking to upgrade their bodies by copying the features of another, more desirable human. These splices are the same process by which the Nexmeco creates child-parent bonds: by replacing half of the child’s DNA with half of the chosen parent. Or in this case, half of the patient’s DNA with that of a paid Nex model. It’s easy money for those lucky enough to have bodies in fashion. No side effects to having your genetic code copied over and over have yet to be found, but the strands of DNA chosen are done so at complete random, the machine not yet delicate enough to pick and choose what traits are the desired ones. This allows for non-physical traits to show up within the Nexups, despite only desiring the physical. Personality disorders arise, heart diseases incur. The recovery process is long and painful for many; follow up medications and surgeries being common.
Even if the best case scenario occurs, and the Nexup obtains the body of their dreams, their personal habits are not absolved from affecting their physical state. Addiction, poverty, and eating habits are all contributors to the inability to maintain their new body type. This alone is enough to repel many people seeking the operation, alongside the fact that it can only be done once in a person’s life. Should your new body go out of fashion, (or should you have a falling out with the other person you’re splicing with), it is the body you are stuck with.
Religious groups are at the forefront of banning the Nexmeco, alongside organizations that claim the parent company, Nasence[2], are archiving the DNA information for more nefarious intentions. While the nation has had a long, dark history of eugenics and gene theft, Nascence claims no such intentions or agenda, the company’s CEO declaring in a statement that ‘[N]o one can own a person’s genetic information.’
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[1] From nexus, meaning ‘a connection/bond or series of connections/bonds linking two or more things’, and ‘mehkos’, the root word for machine, meaning contrivance.
[2] From nascent, meaning ‘just coming into existence’.