Verdance built their H. sapiens from a handful of Earth germlines, licensed from a company whose genetic stock came from ancient human DNA. Supposedly it was the real deal—actual wild-type sequence. Not that anyone was ever decanted without modifications. You needed a synthetic microbiome for senescence control, scrubbers for health, plus networking hardware for, well, everything. Sulfur touched Ace’s identifier in memory. It was hard to imagine having a wild-type human brain. What would it have felt like? Quiet, maybe. Disconnected.
