Biotech corporation selects baseliner as a test subject for an experimental anti-bacterial vaccine.

Subject is from a small community that has been genetically isolated for over four hundred years. There is some evidence of emerging resistance within said community to endemic local bacteria relevant to the corporation’s intended product.

Treatment of test subject with prototype vaccine triggers catastrophic side effects with a terminal prognosis.

As a last ditch gamble to manage potential liability and bad publicity, corporation pod clones test subject. Subject somehow survives, despite lack of preparation, and the new clone is, of course, free of the side effects induced by the test.

However, it is subsequently discovered that the subject’s genome has been altered as a result of Lateral Gene Transfer from the live bacteria in the prototype vaccine.

This genetic change is carried over in the cloning process from one clone to the next. The only identified result of the LGT, so far, is a compromised functioning of the autoimmune system causing the subject to be vulnerable to bacterial infection. This impairment increases slowly the longer the subject spends out of pod but is reversible by extended periods in pod.