Dinner over, Jason heads to his room and logs off. As the pod’s lid cycles open, he is stuck thinking about his new goal in the game, to convert all the lines in his character’s body. A longer term goal than any of his others. While a mage might get thousands of mana in their pool, Energy if different. He shakes his head and crawls out of the pod, game matters can stay in game for now.

Jason walks out into the living room only to hear an odd noise. Someone is in the kitchen, raiding the fridge. Then the noise stops.

“Heyo! Jason, you out there? You need to hop out more often, almost missed you.” Jason’s mom walks out of the kitchen with a brownie in her hand. “I’m here on a quick stop over. The company wants me down at the equator. You would think with fusion power there would be more progress towards routine space travel. Finally, some companies are getting to work on some active support mega structures. No clue what my job will be. It isn’t like my company has anything to do with any of those things.”

“Now before I head out, how about you show me some moves against the fancy dummy I got for you. You’ve always been one for martial arts, but it is still surprising that you need the thing already. Even in the military people generally hit 30 before needing it unaided.”

Jason raises an eyebrow, “I thought these were specific for people using powered suits? Why aren’t you more surprised about me needing one?”

His mom laughs, “You aren’t wrong! The people who need them when not in a suit don’t exactly advertise it. Then again, how many people do you know that actually focuses on personal real world strength? Not strength in NeoRealm or something like political power, but muscle strength? I’ve been around my company’s security department a few times and seen those who actually do. Sure, they still focus on NeoRealm, but that doesn’t stop them from being some of the most chiseled people I’ve ever seen. And not in the body builder sort of way. Rather that deadly look of muscle trained towards actual action and not simply to look nice.”

“Now I will admit, you did surprise me a little. You don’t hang out irl long enough anymore to really get there. Plus, we don’t have any weight training equipment. Still, you seem to have forgotten one little tiny piece of history. The good ol’ biowar.”

Jason frowns, “They did brush over the biowar. Far as I can tell, it just involved using all kinds of sterile engineered animals in a near global fight. Though the teacher did stress that this happened over such a short period, that not much came of it. The monstrous animals all died, and the world got their heads out of their butts and brought more intensive gmo stuff into the light.”

With a shake of her head, his mom sighs, “They still haven’t figured out the whole thing with not learning from history dooms you to repeat it. While that last part is true, until that point gene engineering was so looked down upon by the masses, large corporations and governments got away with many things in secret. The biowar wasn’t over in a short time span, just the open stuff. And not all of those animals were sterile.”

“The actual war? It started over a decade before the visible bit. One corp had a small scuffle with another corp. No one knows the specific corps involved anymore because both are long dead and for some reason the people in power wanted it forgotten. Anyway, the big difference between that fight and others of the era was the spiders. Though admittedly, calling them spiders is a little reductive but once again, no one really knows exactly what went into them.”

“They were however much more than just bio-engineered monstrosities. Cube square law kicks the butt of anyone wanting to make giant insects. Who would have thought that raising giant bugs in an oxygen rich environment and surgically installing oxygen dispensers throughout their body could get around it? But yeah, corps and governments alike all took notice.”

“Looking back, it was honestly all a bit stupid. Sort of like mechs before full dive VR tech came along. But I guess boys will be boys. And with that in mind, the coming decade was inevitable. All kinds of nonsense beasts got pitched against one another. Luckily they stuck to arthropods because that was what they had the tech to speed up the growth of. Or rather what they stuck to with one major exception.”

“Insects are nice, but you need someone to be in charge. Some guy stood out there, surrounded by bugs and calling the shots. Of course they would work on all kinds of modifications. I’m sure you at least learned the biowar was the source of modern prosthetics and artificial organs. The real fun stuff however never got used. The big dust up that brought this shadow war into the limelight happened well before we could get juicy stories of child soldiers.”

“Yes, that’s right, they modified humans! Kind of sad that they got found out so soon if you ignore the human element. They only played around with the basic things. Stuff like muscles that are easier to strengthen and what not. Anyway, all the kids involved got dumped into the foster systems around the world at that point, so this has been a sort of long way of saying maybe you got the genes for super strength?”

Jason rubs the bridge of his nose, “That was really interesting, but I’m mostly certain that I’m just awesome. Plus, I would think you would already know if that was in our ancestry.”

His mom shrugs, “Why rain on my parade?”

Jason rolls his eyes at this, “Because neither of us are protagonists in some popcorn web novel. Plus, the end of the wasn’t long enough ago to have spread into a family tree like ours without being noticed.”

His mom sighs, “You used to play along with me when you were a kid.”

Jason fixes her with a stare, “Now you’re really stretching it. Even as a kid I know when you got going on your nonsense.”