Organic technology had become the rage during the last decade. Why construct something when DNA cultivation allowed to grow a better variation of the same object, completely natural, guaranteed biological, one hundred percent contamination free?

A fortune waited to be made, and Violet Marshal would not stand aside when she could collect her share. Not that anyone would have suspected her to be a player in the high game. The world was in for a surprise.

Violet had the ability to fade. As early as her school days, fading into the background had proved a useful method to go unnoticed. Though she was present, seldom a teacher remembered her face.
School thought her that fading brings you a long way. Later, she realised she needed to deliver results, too. So, she refined the skill to prey on her schoolmates knowledge and work. This became her second valuable asset.

Violet graduated, mostly unnoticed. University turned out to be more tricky, and a certain professor even suspected her of plagiarism. But his investigation came to nothing, and Violet gained her degree in biochemistry while the professor shrugged in bewilderment and turned to the next batch of students.

Her first job landed her at the bottom of the feeding chain in a big research facility. Violet didn't mind. Here, she practised both her fading and her preying. When she left the company three years later, hardly anyone missed her.

Her family and few friends called her nuts to quit a secure job. They turned from her when she opted to found her own business.

~

Two years later, her first patent for bio-builders was pending. Another year, and her lawyers engaged in a fight to the bone—literally—with her former company and two other market leaders. Violet, the inconspicuous newcomer, won the legal suit against the international giants and, from one day to the next, stood in the focus of public interest.

In consequence, she was pressured to learn a third skill, the one of selling herself on media. Violet succeeded, playing the role of the shy but brilliant scientist and honest entrepreneur. The public's sympathy engulfed her.

Now, she was equipped to start her true crusade. While keeping up the front of the friendly, benevolent, ethically correct businesswoman, Violet built an unprecedented, hidden imperium in the obscure realm of bio-building. To provide the necessary cash for bigger plans, she started in the relatively simple field of wood-building.

Violet's self growing furniture became a huge success. Based on tree DNA, the items grew naturally to the dimensions the customer chose. You selected what you wished from a stylish catalogue and bought it as a soilless seedling.
Delivery was made easy by the fact all items measured only a few centimetres when ordered. Placed where you wanted the finished furniture to stand, it was up to you to groom the purchase into the perfect fit for your apartment or house. You followed the instructions and added some additional colours or vitamins into the daily dose of nutritional fluid your growing table or cupboard thrived on. As soon as the item reached the desired size, you fed it a dose of cell hardener and became the lucky owner of a new piece of custom-grown furniture.

A few accidents made for good entertainment, and no one came to harm. The show Furniture Rules boosted the popularity of a formerly insignificant TV channel. Iconic examples of long-legged tables, overfed sofas filling living rooms and malnourished, dwarf-sized beds kept the audience happy.
Furniture grooming soon replaced collecting garden gnomes at the top of the list of favourite pastimes.

With the proceedings of the blooming business, Violet now owned the means to conquer the far more interesting field of bone-building. As a stepping stone, she introduced an exquisite collection of bone furniture. Based on its mad success, her plans unfolded.

Violet never contemplated to replace traditional cars. The strong automobile lobby suspiciously watched her every move—and she strived for bigger goals.
Instead, Violet tackled the problem of public transport. Her strategy was sound: do something for the common people and win their support. In an ingenious move, she made a fortune while squishing ethical misgivings against tampering with living organisms at the root.

After a few experiments gone wrong, a mix of boa and centipede DNA allowed her to grow vehicles big enough to keep up with commuter traffic. To feed reliable routing information to the central nervous system in the spinal column posed the crucial problem. Once solved, the ambitious project took off like lightning. The new means of transport wasn't only ecologically clean, but also comfortable and secure.

From there on, all the possibilities she could wish for stood open to Violet Marshal and her growing entourage. Based on their experience with furniture and road transport, the works of the BioTec group grew everything better, stronger, lighter, and faster than the concurrence.

The creativity and ingenuity of Violet's development team knew no limits. Elephant DNA was used to bone-build heavy machinery, bird and bat DNA for planes, whale DNA for submarines. Soon, the world looked different. Almost everything was custom-grown instead of constructed.

In their unstoppable strive for progress, the BioTec researchers even laid hands on a few samples of rare mammoth and dinosaur DNA. Unfortunately, it was too far deteriorated, the chains too fragmented to be reconstructed in their entirety. Trials to grow even bigger, stronger bone structures came to nothing.
Violet didn't mind. Her newest brand of albatross planes turned out a huge success and the order books of her companies remained full. BoneTec by BioTec was the undisputed leader of the market.

~

Violet Marshal's downfall—and not only hers—was caused by a tiny mistake.

In the secret BioTec research labs, development of new technologies was pushed at a fast pace. Experiments didn't stop at anything, not even human DNA was too sacred to be tested on. Also, there was a whole new program concentrated on invertebrates. Success with plant and mammal based technology, copied by dozens of smaller companies, called for new inventions.

Mollusk shells promised far better roofing material for buildings than simple wood. The digestive process of earthworms held enticing options for agriculture. Therefore, tapeworms, slugs, and jellyfish were brought in as test subjects, and a lone octopus.

Gerard Norman, a brilliant, young, and ambitious lab assistant, proud to be accepted into the research group, had spent the night celebrating this. The party itself wasn't the problem, but while waiting for a boc—short for boa-cab—he'd caught a viscous cold. The next morning, he showed up for work with a serious hangover and a running nose.

Glad no one could see his bloodshot eyes and fittingly coloured nose under the protective gear mandatory for lab work, Gerard delved into his tasks. For a newcomer, they consisted mainly of cleaning up after his more experienced colleagues. Gerard didn't complain. He was able and willing, ready to follow in the footsteps of his great and almost mythical idol, Violet Marshal herself.

Near lunch break, his youthful energy almost spent, he was glad for the chance to get out of the gear and sit down for a few minutes. But before he could leave, the lab supervisor caught his arm.

"Hey, you, Newton-or-whatever, did you feed the animals?"

Gerard Norman, aware he needed to be on the good side of the asshole, sighed and turned towards the cages and tanks where the test specimens were kept. Feeding them took half his break, and when he finally left, his used respiratory mask remained forgotten on a table between two tanks housing marine invertebrates.

In the afternoon, when the team returned, the octopus had left its tank—again—to prey on the crabs in the neighbouring container. Gerard took the blame for not closing the tank properly. Despite his anxiousness, he was forgiven: this had happened before and wasn't a viable reason to fire a distressed newbie.

But the true consequence of his mistake remained undetected. No one realised the sample of octopus skin extracted this afternoon was contaminated by a glob of snot from Gerard's face mask.

Therefore, the test embryo impregnated with the serum extracted from this specific, contaminated sample received a potent shot of mixed octopus and human DNA. Left to develop in a darkened tank of salt water for a few weeks, it had ample time to unfold its remarkable potential.

~

The rest is history —

And now, my dear younglings, you may spend the remainder of the afternoon to continue your work on the essay Why mammals had to bow to the superiority of cephalopods.