"It's not all that different from names being popular," Jason said, sounding defensive. "It's just that instead of one year getting a lot of girls named Emma, we get a lot of girls named Emma who have the same hair and the same nose and the same chin. We do have rules. Like…people. Maybe you can buy and sell gene packs for them before they're born, but it is absolutely illegal to buy or sell a person. You can mess with the parts, but the person as a whole has a lot of rights and protections. Parents can design their kids, within limits, but they can't sell their kids, and adults can't be sold or traded. Those are the strictest laws we've got."

"Within limits?" Mari asked. "What sort of limits?"

"Well," Jason said as he thought, "like when designing became possible, there were some parents who wanted to do things like make their kids mermaids, because they thought that would be really cool. Do you guys know what mermaids are? Okay. But mermaids aren't a viable life-form, at least not the way people wanted them to look. That kind of thing is illegal." He noticed that Kira, Mari, and Alain were staring at him and ducked his head to avoid their gaze. "Yeah, I know. 'O brave new world, that has such people in it.'"

Kira's gaze on Jason went from horrified to questioning. "You said that last line different. Is that a quote or something?"

"Yeah, from…" Jason sighed. "Shakespeare. Those Guilds kept that from you too, didn't they? He wrote plays and poems a long time ago. He's still the greatest ever. 'Time's glory is to calm contending kings, to unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light.' That's what you did," he said to Mari.

"Bring truth to light," Kira's mother repeated, gazing at Jason. "Yes. That is important. But it can demand a high price."

"You mean the war?" Jason asked. "That's something a lot of people on Earth know about. There have been vids and stuff about it. You know, movies. Visual re-creations."

"Of a war?" Mari said. "I can't imagine wanting to see that. My husband and I have seen too much of war already. You say your mother's company makes weapons, though?"

"Yeah, but we haven't had any wars for a while," Jason said, sounding oddly apologetic. "We've got great defensive technologies back in Sol Star System. For about the last century no one has been able to figure out how to build weapons that can get through the defenses. So we haven't had any major wars because nobody could successfully attack anyone else."

"What angers you?" Alain asked.

Jason gave him a startled look. "Uh, you could tell…? It's people back on Earth. There are a bunch who say we ought to have wars, that because we aren't we're all getting soft."

"Do you believe that?" Kira asked, appalled.