Title: PRINTR
Author: Charlaxy

Patenting DNA has always been controversial, even as corps were salivating at the thought, precisely because it had forbidden power. It meant patenting life; our very beings. It meant everything. Existence and nature itself could be owned and profited from, making life heaven or hell, depending which end of it you got on.

Patenting of DNA that occurred naturally -- like human DNA -- was struck down. Patenting of synthetic or modified DNA was not. It started with strains of plants. Then it moved on to bacteria. Livestock. Pets. Eventually, it progressed to the ultimate goal all along: "improvements" upon humans. Genetic augmentations, and then after that, APs -- artificial persons -- themselves.

How do you tell an AP from everyone else? The patented DNA, along with some legalese "junk" put in there to make identification quick and easy without having to fully sequence the genome and look someone up in a database. Using their copywritten code was forbidden, and it told you so. Using DNA base pairs as bits, it was written out in language that was translatable by the personal DNA scanners that cops -- and of course, hackers -- now carried.

This tech, along with advances in a type of genome editing that started with CRISPR/Cas9, after several iterations, ended up with a device that's capable of changing the genome in some common bacteria, and doing it on the fly. This was helped by the discovery that DNA repair enzymes use electrical charges to communicate about whether anything needs replacing on the strand, and that these enzymes could be modified for a purpose. This had a few practical applications, but you know what it was mainly used for: messages that were completely invisible to all but those with the ability to sequence a genome.

Since the discovery of DNA, there'd been alien-astronaut and Bible-code kind of theories about hidden meanings in the strings of ATCG. More recently, it'd been dreamed by biohackers that information could not only be stored in DNA, but actually printed by an organism onto its *own* DNA. This idea was jokingly referred to by the community as PRINTR, a meaningless backronym that conveyed their wish for the next step in DNA modification -- the ability to self-modify on the go. You just needed the tech to write sequences, and the knowledge to not kill anyone doing it -- the latter was now the harder part, as the former had been realized. The early days of DIY DNA modification were problematic. Conceived of as a way to cheaply treat genetic illness, it was found that altering the DNA of a living, breathing human sometimes caused more cancer than it cured. Self-experimentation on humans slowed; experimentation on bacteria, however, continued to bloom.

That's where a neat message-encoding device came in. Type something up in a form of quaternary, store it in a bacterium that humans can have comfortably replicating on them (say, a mutualistic Lactobacillus in the mouth), transfer these carrier bacteria to someone who knows what to look for, and then disinfect to destroy any remainders and to make a clean(er) slate for the next missive. It was currently cost-prohibitive to detect this kind espionage with broad sweeps; corporations couldn't conduct regular DNA tests on all employees, and governments couldn't swab entire populations.

This tech was made with it in mind that someone imprisoned in a dictatorship may be able to smuggle out a message on their garbage. In reality, it was more commonly used for corporate espionage via a worker's discarded coffee cup. It carried a risk that DNA would be found along with the messenger, but unlike most mediums for reconnaissance, it was difficult to stumble upon the message. The finder had to know exactly what to search for out of hundreds of types of human bacteria. Again, it was currently unlikely that any corp could check all of their employee's garbage on a daily basis, whereas they were more likely to find intel sent via any form of telecommunications or magnetic storage. Technology is an arms race that's constantly advancing, and these days of smuggling the written word through bacteria wouldn't last long.

With further iterations on this technology, much more information could potentially be stored this way in the future: a gram of DNA could store multiple petabytes of information. The trouble was that it took a lot of time to generate that much DNA. Current methods of in vivo replication worked at a rate of 100 bits per second. This made it slower than the modems that were around when the term "modem" was coined, in 1958, which beat this speed by 10 bps. Bacterial genomes have been found that contain more than 14 Mega base pairs.

This brings us to where the technology is now. When hackers started making their own pocket DNA encoders/decoders, there were of course talks on it at gatherings like DEF CON. Enthusiasts in attendance continued to meet up and discuss the tech, and an idea was put forth: what if they gifted this tech to rats in the walls at all the major tech companies, formed a sort of Section 31 to monitor any results that may come of it? It could be an early warning system in case any of these corps was plotting more evil in their respective skunkworks. Word was slowly filtered out to people that were amenable, devices were built and handed off, and drop points were set and regularly checked. Chatter through these channels started out at a high level, with enthusiastic over-reporting of minor concerns and incidents. It gradually tapered off as nothing big happened for a while, and the Network of Rats Against Dystopia gradually fatigued of regularly monitoring their feeds.

Someone forgets to check a drop for a while, and then when it's remembered, a message has come through that's overly cryptic. Maybe the DNA is corrupted from age or contamination, or the messenger was under pressure. It feels urgent. A group convenes to go over potential meanings. They recognize that it might contain a date in its repeated code: seedingHBD19915seedingHBD19915...

Could it be September 15th, 2019? That date was approaching in a few weeks. "Is that really the best that our people can do? Is HBD a disease?" someone asks, with no good answers. They know what the most likely meaning of "seeding" is, at least within the context of conversations had within NORAD — a theorized scenario that they feared, wherein (perhaps with the use of planted users, or bots) a social network uses its algorithm for news to subconsciously influence users' thoughts. A social media company could seed on its own network, and the message would naturally spread to other ones. As the date that they were warned of draws closer, they figure it out just in time to see the plan unfolding. A "grassroots" campaign begins in which users of a network run by one of the big tech companies begin to have "ironic" real life gatherings to celebrate its founder's birthday. "What? That guy who's everyone's friend? This was just to get publicity by celebrating his birthday?" Why would this be worth warning anyone about? They'd kept their secret messages too terse, too coded. However, ironic jokes are sometimes indistinguishable from the real thing. It ends up that a billionaire's birthday is celebrated by people around the country -- even around much of the world -- as a day for users to come together and party. "Ironically."

The pickups are now checked vigilantly again, and at the proceeding pickup time, there's a follow up with with a more terse, but more dire message: "RUNNING." Who likes to have masses of people celebrating their birthdays? A type of politician that's better known as a dictator. Sure enough, a 2020 campaign is announced.

All was quiet for a while after this reveal. They dared to think that maybe the worst was over. They kept up that illusion of omission for a few weeks, and then: "AcquisitionAnnouncement" -- a message directing them to watch the news for just that. A rival announces that they've bought a biotech lab and are looking at what genetic differences lead to someone being conservative, liberal, or where ever else they may fall on the political map. With panic, a few members of NORAD realize there's a possibility that someone may be engineering a virus that could target certain voters for ulterior motives -- say, to stop their rivals from being voted into government. It's decided that the rat network needs to expand within new ventures like this. They put out a call on the web, in the form of a puzzle in a genetic code, aiming to recruit more biologists to their cause to keep tabs on the situation. The future of humanity needs hackers that know more than just machines of silicon and circuits. They need to know how to watch out for malicious hacking of living things -- from their brains down to their cells.