Human printing

Human printing is comparable to the act of human cloning, as described in the sci-fi story,  '8113 '. The difference is, cloning requires a starting material, and all products are genetically identical to the parent. Printing is a fictional method using genetic typists who sew together strings of random nucleotides (G, T, A, and C) to create de novo products, requiring no starting material from a living host. Since each typist works off a different blueprint, and each generation is likely to have random insertions or deletions of nucleotides, the products are genetically dissimilar each time.

Compare a document of words that is copy-pasted onto new page over and over (cloning), versus being rewritten from scratch over and over by hand (printing). Minor human errors generate diversity in the product, meaning no two 'reprints' are identical. However, the practice only employs five blueprints, meaning all reprints are roughly cousins of one another, genetically.

Reprints are widely regarded as physically and mentally inferior; empty shells that require a puppeteer to control. Initially, they were mass produced by Houix to act as soldiers in wars. Their lifespans were particularly short (sometimes weeks), as they would rapidly deteriorate and unravel into a fleshy mess. They also typically had the intelligence of a child, incapable of thinking or acting on their own. Their stupidity and blind obedience made them useful as cannon-fodder, slave labor, and living test subjects.

Human printing was outlawed during the Talking War, when it was found to be ethically akin to human cloning. Large-scale applications of the science, such as Project De Novo, were shut down as a result. Printing partial human pieces, however, remains legal (eg: a replacement arm, liver, etc) and uses a bag-o-bod and a growing pod to regrow human pieces for surgeries/replacements. This practice is common on Houix in lieu of mechanical augmentations, which is viewed as unnatural.

In the story, Tum Gow is a genetic typist working for Limbix in Mons. He takes advantage of a discarded body-growing pod to fully clone himself multiple times, resulting in a series of misadventures.