‘I have to stay out of trouble,’ Charlie said after a few seconds’ thought. ‘From my life so far, I want to be the most boring, ordinary, well-behaved kid. I want to work hard, get top grades and earn a scholarship to a top college.’

Mango nodded. ‘I don’t want to pressure you,’ she said. ‘You’ve not seen anything illegal. You can’t prove any of the things I’ve said I’ve done. And you’re the last person who’d go running to the cops.

‘But if you come aboard, the risk will be well rewarded. I’ll pay a hundred and fifty dollars an hour. Maybe one evening per week, and five or six hours every Saturday or Sunday. That will give you twelve hundred a week, tax free. That’s enough to buy a car, to have nice clothes and build a nest egg so you can study at college, rather than kill yourself working two jobs.’

‘I’ve never had nice stuff,’ Charlie admitted. ‘But I’ve never studied synthetic biology. I don’t know anything about designer babies, or gene therapy.’

‘I can teach you, and for the first few weeks I’ll be right alongside you. It’s more complex than teaching a new employee to make an lime muffin, but it’s a laboratory process that can be broken down into simple steps.’

‘Can I think this over?’ Charlie asked.

‘For sure,’ Mango said. ‘But I know how curious minds work. You’ll get back to OIL, log on to the WiFi and start reading articles on human-gene editing, then you’ll look up the new laws going through Congress to see what the punishments are. Am I right?’

‘Obviously,’ Charlie said.

‘Well don’t,’ Mango warned. ‘The CIA uses a deep learning AI system that can scan a billion pieces of unencrypted web traffic per second. Even in privacy mode, your searches can easily be linked to you, and if the system links someone with your criminal record reading papers on human gene editing, it’ll get flagged up to a human intelligence agent.’

‘Really?’ Charlie said.

Mango nodded. ‘The government has had satellites and monitoring stations for decades, but in the last few years computer power and behavioural recognition tech has improved to the point where they can analyse everything. If you want to be a bad guy, data encryption is no longer optional. But I can loan you a quantum encrypted tablet, with a 5g hook-up and location masking.’

‘Is that legal?’ Charlie asked.

‘First amendment says it is,’ Mango said. ‘So you’re welcome to think, but there’s a guy who works in the bakery. He’s got an engineering degree. I’ve been considering approaching him for a while now. I think you have greater potential, but someone has to be trained in all the basic techniques before Junior is born, so I can’t wait forever.’