Editing Nikephoros Galen (section)

===The genesmith of Monsanto===
What was to become one of the Galaxy's worst nightmares had fairly humble beginnings. Nikephoros Galen was born on Monsanto, an unremarkable Agri World the inhabitants of which eked out a living by supplying their more industrialised neighbours with food and other agricultural products. The ever-growing demand has eventually forced the barons of Monsanto to resort to geneurgy in order to increase the output of their plantations. After a period of trial and error, the experiment was considered a success. With its agricultural yield nearly quadrupled, Monsanto entered a new era of prosperity, although this gilded age was soured by the voices of dissidents, stating that the planet's gene-spliced food was to be blamed for the alarmingly increasing rates of mutations and birth defects. 

Galen was one of those protesters. As the only child in a family of physicians who ran a maternity hospital in the planet's capital, he was exposed to the genetic catastrophe unleashed by the unscrupulous barons since his earliest years. Hardly a day passed without a weeping young mother leaving the premises of their clinic with a drooling, oozing blob of flesh in her trembling arms. His father's research pointed unambiguously at the gene-modified food products as the source of this curse of freaks, yet he was wise enough not to embark on a fool's crusade against the planet's autocratic rulers. His son, however, was filled with naive idealism so typical of young people and decided to throw down a challenge to the whole system.

This endeavour was bound to end like hundreds of similar movements before it, with its message ridiculed by the corrupt media and its leaders rotting in prisons or stung to death by hunter-seeker killer bees employed by the baronial security forces against their loudest enemies. And so it was all the more surprising that it didn't, whether it was due to Galen's righteous personality, the impeccable evidence he presented or his leadership skills, allowing him to build a vast network of non-violent protesters across the globe. Realising that they couldn't silence this annoying upstart without provoking the public ire, the barons opted for an alternative approach.

Although Galen suspected a trap when he was suddenly invited to the court of one of Monsanto's most influential barons, he realised that this was the opportunity he had passionately been working towards all these years. He was bracing himself for an exhausting confrontation as he scaled the grand stairs leading to the baron's private quarters, but instead of the monster he had pictured in his mind, an intelligent and understanding man greeted him as he entered the meeting room. The baron listened closely to all the demands and accusations the young doctor threw at him, agreed with much of what he said and then offered him a chance to set things straight together. Galen was offered the position of high geneurge in Monsanto's biggest agricultural corporation, so that he could help weed out the defects in modified plant DNA that caused mutations and birth defects. Seeing this as an opportunity of a lifetime, Nikephoros agreed without much deliberation.

In the wake of Galen's unexpected switching sides, several other prominent members of his organisation received high positions in large agricultural holdings. The positive publicity for the barons was overwhelming; for a time, even their harshest critics believed that they were witnessing a shift towards more ethical agriculture. Of course certain malcontents accused Galen of selling out to the enemy, but those were largely marginalised and ignored. Meanwhile, Nikephoros himself made a most disheartening discovery as he was learning the ropes of his new job: ridding the gene-modified plants of potentially malicious DNA was a nigh-insurmountable task. Due to stark differences between human and plant gene code, the effects of their interaction were extremely unpredictable, but consistently disastrous. He toiled day and night in front of the gene anvil, taking dangerous energetics to compensate for a lack of sleep, and yet his labours were all in vain. The system crushed yet another noble soul who thought he could change it.