Cataclysm: Undead Dragons and Zero Empire

Chapter 100 Genetic Tradition

There was a deathly silence, as if what they saw was not a long-forgotten technical solution, but a ferocious beast crawling out of the abyss of history.

That was a dark period in the foundation's history, a taboo that was completely sealed away in the dust of time by the board of directors through a ban, the destruction of countless documents, and several purges.

"Commander-in-Chief—this is a matter of great importance, are you sure?"

The disaster caused by the cloning project is still etched in the collective memory of the Foundation. Even though they were demoted for contradicting the commander, they still believe that the project was born with an ineradicable scourge, and that an even greater disaster could not be used to resolve the current stalemate in the war.

Karen simply scanned each excited face in the conference room with her eyes, watching their almost pleading urgency.

Like all the global giants in the interstellar society, the Boros Global Foundation has always adhered to the principle of "profit maximization". When gene technology experienced explosive growth during the foundation's golden age, the board of directors immediately focused on the technology's unparalleled potential for "cost reduction and efficiency improvement".

It was an era defined by expansion and fanaticism. The Foundation's trade empire was rapidly spreading across the entire galaxy, with ships carrying goods from industrial planets to various markets for dumping. Sector after sector was incorporated into the Foundation's colonial territory, resulting in an astronomical labor shortage.

Whether it's the non-stop production lines in mineral planets and nebula refineries, the farms on agricultural planets that cultivate nano-active crops day and night, or the trading ports and space stations along interstellar routes that require human maintenance, they are all frantically devouring the population.

The growth rate of the natural population can never keep up with the pace of the Foundation's expansion. Even if the contract length of corporate employees is increased again and again, the large-scale employment of laborers from subordinate civilizations still cannot meet the labor shortage, and considerable costs are incurred in dealing with a series of problems such as labor riots and racial conflicts.

Cloning technology provided the board with a near-perfect solution.

The first batch of clones were used in the most basic mining operations, placed in the most dangerous positions. This was more cost-effective than using intelligent machines. Genetic engineers carefully designed the biological templates of these first-generation clones according to the board's requirements, removing emotions and autonomous thinking abilities that were considered superfluous, and strengthening their physical endurance and environmental adaptability.

They don't need wages, benefits, or rest. They only need a minimal amount of nutrient solution to sustain their lives, and they can work continuously in the harshest environments until their bodies completely collapse, at which point they are replaced by new clones.

The cost accounting results delighted the board: the total cost of cultivating a clone from start to finish was less than the salary required to hire a free man to perform a single job.

Once the floodgates were opened, they could never be closed again, and cloning technology spread rapidly within the Foundation at an almost insane pace.

Almost all high-risk and repetitive jobs were filled by clones, and the Foundation's productivity exploded like never before. Trade profits grew like a snowball, and the board families made a fortune. As they looked at the constantly changing numbers on the books, they felt more and more that these mindless, obedient clones were the most perfect production tools in the universe.

Driven by profit, technological iteration is always faster than imagined. Cloning technology quickly broke through the boundaries of "labor" and penetrated into more core areas.

Technological advancements have enabled the strict control of directed gene expression. Through cutting and modification, genetic traits are separated and altered, creating a more perfect version of themselves. This allows board members, who already possess long lifespans due to their innate genetic optimization, to be pulled back from the brink of aging and death time and time again. Their lifespans seem endless, and their control over power becomes increasingly stable. Only entropy increase can limit them.

Degraded versions of this technology were quickly flooded the market, with custom-made organs being offered for trade. Spare organs became the best-selling and most profitable commodities at the time. These custom-made organs were far more efficient than those produced by inferior genetic technology, perfectly matching the host's genetic sequence. Not only did they not cause any rejection reactions, but they could also optimize the original physical condition over time.

A massive organ trading market has emerged, becoming a new profit growth point for the foundation. It has also quickly launched an "organ loan" service, allowing even ordinary employees and civilians with modest incomes to purchase customized cloned organs through advance consumption loans. They can use their future income to pay for their health and lifespan, or they will be eliminated from the competition.

Regarding the clones themselves, the Foundation has even launched what can only be described as "clone insurance." Most clones used in non-lower-level positions are required to retain emotional abilities to cope with various situations. Over time, they will age and their work abilities will decline. Eventually, they will be destroyed by the Foundation and replaced with a new generation of clones.

However, as long as the clones purchase "clone insurance" for themselves, the foundation will provide these clones with regular genetic maintenance and technical repairs to extend their service life and prevent them from being replaced by new clones.

This business opened up a new avenue for revenue for the board of directors. They produced clones, used them for work to generate profits, and charged maintenance fees to the clones, profiting from both ends and taking the essence of business to the extreme.

As the cloning program reached its most radical stage, the board was no longer content with using clones only in workplaces. They turned their attention to the core personnel supporting the Foundation's development: scientists, top engineers, designers, and military strategists—

The wisdom and experience of these talents are a valuable asset to the foundation, but their lives are always interrupted by death, forcing the foundation to pay a higher price to nurture the next generation.

Cloning technology gave the board of directors the possibility of making wisdom perpetual. They began to cultivate backup clones for each core talent, which could not only assist in their work, but also ensure that the wisdom of these top talents would not disappear with the end of their lives. They would work for the foundation for eternity.

The implementation of this technology ushered in a second boom in the Foundation's technological development. The research speed, which had been repeatedly brought down by death, was able to continue at its peak, and the ideas of countless geniuses continued to take root and flourish in the generations of clones.

The board at the time even proposed a crazy plan to completely replace the Foundation's natural population corporate employees with clones, achieving zero-employment operation for the entire civilization.

They wanted to create a social system controlled by the top natural population and operated entirely by clones at the bottom, much like the perpetual motion production system built by the Humboldt Covenant using a large number of corpse employees, to compress costs to the extreme and maximize profits.

However, a disaster was already brewing in the shadows. As the genetic template was passed down for generations, uncontrollable deviations began to appear. These small deviations gradually accumulated, like cancer slowly sliding into the abyss.

In pursuit of higher work capabilities and to meet various customized needs, engineers continuously modified the genetic sequences of clones, resulting in increasingly poor genetic stability. The originally weakened sense of autonomy and resistance mutated and awakened with each replication.

The failure of natural evolution, which was ultimately seen as a failure, gave a shock to intelligent life that had scorned nature.