gTat (part 1)

The scientist sat down next to the girl. He had a pierce nosed and right eye brow. There was a tattoo on the back of his neck but she couldn't make out what it was. It looked as though it was part of a much larger tattoo.

"I am required by California Federal law to inform you about the consequences of getting a genetic tattoo." He said.

"Ok." She said, knowing all what he was going to say after looking it up online.

This is the first time the girl had been in a genlab before. The place was dimly lit save for a bright light by a table that looked like a doctor threw it out. There was loud rock music playing from headphones by a screen.

"Here hop up on the table here," he said. She complied, and he continued, "A genetic tattoo is permanent. There are some procedures to reverse the process but there is no guarantee any of the procedures will be successful. Your genetic tattoo will be in your DNA for the rest of your life and may or may not be copied into your children's DNA and children's children's DNA and so on." He continued the copy that he had to speak multiple times a day. "There is a slim chance that implanting information will cause a genetic disorder in yourself or your offspring, however that chance is next to nothing. Do you have any questions for me at this time?"

"No."

"Ok, I'm going to screen your code so I can program the dust to you." He said, slipping back into the vernacular dropping 'genetic' from 'genetic code' and referring to nano-tech as 'dust'.

"Ok."

He stared and his computer for a while. The colors of the computer danced on his face. "You said this is your first gTat, right?"

"Yes."

"Because if this is you, you already have one."

"What?!"

"One of your parents must've gotten a gTat."

She lol'd. "My parents?! Yeah, right. My parents barely even have tattoos, they would NEVER get a gTat."

"Well ONE of your ancestors did, because the header information is here." The scientist beckoned her, "Here take a look at this."

She walked around to look at his screen. All she saw was a jumble of numbers and letter in various colors.

"You see this right here is the header information that says a gTat is being inserted, but the rest I can't make out. It's all static."

"Static?"

"Yeah, usually people will get text imprinted, last names, Chinese characters, that kinda thing. SOMEtimes, someone'll get a small image, and it'll look kinda like this, but I tried opening it as an image and it looks like more garbage."

The scientist tabbed over to an image of randomly colored pixels.

"What is it?" The girl asked.

"I dunno, I've never seen anything like this before. If I were you, I'd go home and ask your folks about this."

To be continued...