Carder

I was at a low point.  My girlfriend had dumped me at Cogwerk Port (for a lousy clone! Can you believe that? I'll get you Drake!)... the clan I was in was stagnating and I was low on niode with bills to pay when I got approached with a proposition by an agent I'd been friends with in the local arena for awhile.  Change teams Myco, he said.  I know a clan that would love to have you and they just won the Niode Lottery so you'll get a sign on bonus.  Okay, says me.  Low and behold the clan in question was the Mecha Samurai.  I'd heard of them too.  They've got a stable of pilots a few of whom have become lesser celebrities in their own right... what with patented finishing moves and expertise in specialized mecha martial arts.  I had to say yes.

Why am I called mycobacter?  I wasn't always a mech pilot, you see.  Originally I was a splicer from one of the colonies on old Mars.  Tell me you've heard of Old Mars, right? Listen, so after the Earth got too polluted, radioactive, poisoned, overcrowded, blown to sh*t or whatever the hell happened down there (nobody is too sure these days but scientists study it from afar peering through the thick layers of atmospheric smog) one of the next logical choices for humanity to go was, logically buddy, the next planet over.  Anyway pal, I digress.

You want to know why my fighter name is after a genus of bacteria, right?  Where was I? Oh, right! Old Mars!  Anyway, the NeoAmericans with funding from a couple of the high tech Asian tigers got to work terraforming the Big Red rust ball through geo engineering and as that went on the relative democracy of the first research outposts yielded way to corporatocracy on the large Mars Malls which you see dotting the martian landscape today.  New governance needed new rules so Old Earth Laws got scrapped and modified while new charters got codified.  Without all that old technophobia that had previously held people back there was a huge ass boom in demand for biotech and synbio workers. Guys like me.  The whole place had been geo-engineered and terraformed so arguments and paperwork about what was "natural" and any needing to have 'careful ecosystem considerations' got sucked out the airlock just like a space fart!

A lab accident involving bacteria I was plating that had been hybridized with DNA artificially synthesized from traces of Forerunner organic material left me coated in a thin layer techno-organic goop.  Got quarantined. When they noticed I didn't die from the exposure, there were attempts at decon.

Lab teams told me from tests that the stuff on me appeared to be symbiotic or at least commensal, and it wasn't virulent anymore so I got let out of the bubble.  Like tuberculosis, after initial infection the stuff lies dormant so they took to calling me mycobacter and the name stuck.  Don't call me a cyborg.  I'm not a mutant either; still human under that layer of hybrid bacteria. I prefer to be referred to as a "transfected human."

Well yeah I still do a little work making designer genes. Didn't learn my lesson? Shut the heck up, I'm more careful now.  The real money is in mecha battles though.  I'm hoping if I scrimp and save enough niode and crystals I can get myself a Gigus or Skriag eventually.  Now don't quote me on this but I'd be willing to wager that having been transfected will probably give me an edge.

Submitted by Mycobacter# 712744