Bag-o-bod

In the sci-fi story, '8113', a bag-o-bod is the colloquial term for a sack of dehydrated organic ingredients (mostly carbon-based molecules), that is used for the purpose of human printing or cloning. One bag of dry ingredients, once hydrated and fed a genomic blueprint, can grow into one adult human. The reprint or clone grows in a jelly-filled tank until it is fully formed. Reprints or clones can regrow identical versions of themselves rapidly and indefinitely so long as they have one bag-o-bod per recreation, a genetic input (eg: hair, saliva sample, downloaded genome), and a growth tank.

Bag-o-bods are the key starting material used by the Martian manufacturing company, Limbix, which grow replacement limbs and organs for customers. The sacks feature prominently in the story of genetic typist, Tum Gow Cheng, who steals bag-o-bods from his employer to illegally clone himself for fun. After his seventh clone (Tum Gow VII) has the original Tum Gow killed, the clone goes on to live in rural Mars with his original's older brother. A colleague from work sends Tum Gow VII a tank and a large supply of bag-o-bods so the clone can continue recreating himself. This is required since reprints or clones have much shorter lifespans than originals. Over the course of the story, which spans several years, Tum Gow clones himself a total of fourteen times using this method. He also uses the same bag-o-bod sacks to generate the fully humanized version of Honey, using a strand of her hair as the genetic input. For reasons that baffle Tum Gow and others, Honey does not require any additional reprints of herself throughout the same time-frame in the story; she remains perfectly healthy and ages quite naturally compared to Tum Gow.