#SciFi

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The Void - Dark sci-fi space opera.

S02E05 - The Savage Planet:

When a Makeen kills and partially consumes a human on a joint colony, a diplomatic row erupts and the Liberator is forced to intervene.

Makeen and human interaction has been a success for the Republic. But their predatory nature has always unnerved humanity, and this fear threatens to undermine the progress that has been made.

https://www.ratchman.com/episodes/the-void-the-long-cold-dark-s02e05-the-savage-planet

Image by teddy09. Mira Candor takes Ludmilla Zielinski for her first ever ice-cream sundae. Ludmilla, a young girl saved from a slaver by Mira, has led a tortured existence at the hands of her owner, and so has never experienced anything like chocolate or ice-cream. Mira decides to treat her by taking her to a brightly lit, neon-drenched frozen pudding conveyor and she delights in one of the sweet treats. Mira sits opposite Ludmilla, sit in the scarlet armour they wear, not touching their own sundae. It is a bonding moment between a little girl that has never experienced joy before, and a brutal bounty hunter that has taken upon themselves to return her home.

“Could it be mitochondrial DNA?”

“No, ma’am, it doesn’t work that way.”

“And it’s not just a random mutation?”

“No, we’ve had 174 pairs of identical twins volunteering, and it’s always the same. In each pair, there’s this one DNA edit in the same place: an almost identical gene, but at the end of the strand one sibling has a different base - CGAT - than the other.”

“And we don’t otherwise know what this section of DNA does?”

“Well... that’s where it gets interesting. All people have this gene, but it has some edits near the end of the strand. We thought it was random mutations on an inactive gene, but it turns out, each person has different bases. In twins it’s just... consecutive.”

“You mean...?”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s a serial number.”