Science-goes-too-far on Blue Planet’s Poseidon, too:
Bathtub Biolabs
Xenosilicates open up new frontiers in the field of genetic modification and redesign. More so, they enabled the transformation of the entire field from one that was the almost exclusive domain of governments and the largest Incorporates to one in which also small research teams and enterprises could participate and the benefits of which would become far more accessible to a broad public, by severly reducing costs and risks across the board. However, the proliferation of modification technology made possible by xenosilicate application did not stop after crossing this border from the massive sponsored efforts of its early days.
The unstable political situation in the Free Zones of Earth but especially on Poseidon with its abundance of cheap xenosilicates gave rise to an entire sector of the biomod industry made up from unregulated and often questionabe small scale operations – what has been termed “bathtub biolabs” by some.
These facilities can be found anywhere, from bombed-out backstreets to Poseidon-native huts, and are chiefly characterized by their creative use of common materials – often household appliances and fixtures – to reduce the amount of hightech required for their operation. As such, the thermal breakdown of xenosilicate wafers may be done over a camping stove, while a set of optimized organs sit in an actual bathtub filled with nutrient solution and sealed with bioplastic foil and the same old bodycomp that is playing the owner’s music is also running the temperature logs for the cheap syringes freshly loaded with transformation viruses in the refurbished commercial refrigerator at the back.
Bathtub biolabs play their part in giving wide access to biomods and genetic therapies even to people outside the customer base of more visible and established providers. This often also includes criminals, terrorists and their respective organizations, who often are direct stakeholders in the operations.