Glad You're Born

By Scott Michael Decker

Allison Strange isn't your typical young woman. She's the daughter of Constantine Strange, Governor of the planet Catalonia and CEO of Strange Corporation, the sixth largest planetary economy and the largest producer of clones in the galaxy. The indigenous alien moss is liquefied into an elixir fed to gestating clones, a longer-lived and more obedient clone than produced anywhere else, but requiring periodic infusions of moss elixir to remain docile. The decreasing moss habitat is at odds with the increasing labgrown manufacture. Reared at her father's knee on planetary economics, Allison has long advocated for the move to orbital clone factories to increase moss habitat, its seven-vector reproductive cycle impossible to replicate elsewhere. The first labgrown protest disrupts her debutante ball, and amidst increasing clone agitation, Allison discovers mounting evidence that her mother may not have been completely honest about Allison's conception and birth. Gladborn backlash to labgrown protests becomes brutally overt, where previously domestic abuse and rape was the covert norm. Allison finds herself on the wrong side of gladborn-labgrown relations, bringing her into conflict with her mother, her father, and her society. And her life falls apart when Allison discovers that, when she was an infant, her mother stole her from a factory harness. Is it any wonder that Allison Strange is glad you're born?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Michael Decker
• Release date: Aug 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781941911082